JEARRARD'S HERBAL
24th April 2023
Arisarum proboscideum .
It has been a complicated week. The weather has scudded through the garden, pushed by a stiff breeze. The sun has been warming, but the chill factor has been inescapable.
As the sun goes down, the house suddenly becomes cold and I have been lighting the fire and pretending it is still winter.
A week ago my trusty camera let me down. It has gone off to be repaired but it left me scrabbling through old drawers looking for discarded cameras from other ages.
I have a video camera that I last used in 2010. It will do moderately good still photos if required. The first problem was to check that the battery would still hold a charge.
Amazingly, it worked. Unfortunately the pictures have a very low resolution, adequate for 1995 (when I bought it) but not a patch on my phone.
Equally geriatric was my old Fuji bridge camera, but it has served me for the week. It goes through batteries at a frightening rate but it has a better depth of focus than the camera
I currently use, which gave an interesting insight into Arisarum proboscideum. I had given up taking pictures of it, the long tails on the inflorescence were never in focus.
Good old Fuji could cope, something I will bear in mind for the future.
24th April 2023
Clivia miniata .
Throughout the garden the signs of winter are being submerged under burgeoning growth. Leaves are starting to grow on the bare branches. From the top of the garden I can see a small patch of woodland in the distance.
It has changed subtly from brown to olive green. It isn't leafy yet but it is moving. In the garden, Acer campestre was smothered in clusters of golden-green leaflets. The wind put a stop to that,
burning them to brown on the windward side. On the other hand, Acer palmatum was unaffected. I wish I had planted more of them.
Winter hit the greenhouse harder. I am clearing away the dead foliage but there is still a long way to go. The Clivia were burnt by a radiation frost in early December. It hadn't been forecast
and it took both the garden and the gardener by surprise. For a few weeks it looked as though the time had come to give up Clivia completely. Fortunately it wasn't followed by hard frosts.
Burnt foliage dried up and didn't rot, most of the plants are fine and starting to grow. It reminds me that I should take more time to cover them over at the end of autumn. I hesitate
when the weather still seems warm, but the Clivia and the Dendrobium have all suffered this year from my complacency. The last serious chill was in 2018 and the plants had just recovered,
this should have been a good year for them.
Fortunately the winter was damaging and not devastating. Seedling Clivia planted out in the Hedychium house have come into flower. They are mostly orange but there are a few yellow ones among them.
One day I will get the conditions right.
24th April 2023
Maxillaria rhombea .
In some ways it was a good winter. It "clarified" the contents of the greenhouse. For a couple of years I have been pushing my luck with the cold tolerance of some of the orchids.
There are hundreds of interesting species that grow high in the mountains of Asia and South America. I was convinced that they would cope with an occasional frost, at least in
a greenhouse where the temperature rises rapidly when the sun comes up. Many things have been surprisingly tolerant but a harsh radiation frost did some damage.
Coelogyne from the Himalayas coped well, but C. multiflora from the forests of Sulawesi died with the first frost. Hardiness in the genus seems to be restricted to the mountain species.
Maxillaria gave similar results. M. rhombea comes from the mountains of Mexico and was undamaged. It greeted the spring by coming into flower. Species from the high
Andes have had some leaf damage but seem otherwise intact. Species from wet forests in the lower mountains are dead.
It was a year of clarification. Some surprising orchids are remarkably hardy, others are not. I have a clearer idea of what the boundaries are. I will take more care to provide
overhead cover, I will be more cautious in my choice of plants, but I will continue to push my luck.
In that context, the flowers of Maxillaria rhombea are a small triumph.
24th April 2023
Tropaeolum tricolor .
Small triumphs are the gardener's consolation. The top of the garden is filled with Erythronium. They blow in the wind and they close in the rain, but when the sun comes out they
are magnificent.
I have tried to clear a patch of brambles that have established closer to the house. There is a spring flowering Clematis underneath them, and it is too late to wade in and root the bramble out.
As I snipped away I noticed a thread of scarlet flowers supported on almost invisible stems. I had to stop cutting, I can't see what I am doing. The bramble will survive for another day.
The flowers belong to Tropaeolum tricolor. I planted it years ago and although I have seen it in flower several times since, I was still convinced that it was dead. It is tougher
than it looks. When it dies down I will cut back the Clematis, dig out the bramble, and see if I have enough Tropaeolum tubers to spread around the garden.
The Fuji camera delivered the goods. A picture of Tropaeolum tricolor in focus when required. I wonder why I abandoned this camera as a source of images. It only took seventeen attempts
to get it to auto-focus on the flowers and not the background.
It is a triumph of sorts.