Making It Grow Minutes

We visited Irmo Middle School recently to see their pollinator garden. Originally started by science teacher Will Green to help migrating monarch’s use their only larval food source, milkweed, on their trip back to Mexico for the winter, this garden evolved into a teaching facility.

Sometimes laurel thickets are called laurel hells and there are tall tales in the Appalachian Mountains about men and hunting dogs getting lost in them never to be seen again.

Although the common name of Kalmia latifolia is mountain laurel, you can find this handsome evergreen native plant growing, often in thickets, from the mountains to the sea.

Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville was the creation of Mrs. D. R. Coker, affectionately called Miss May. The property, originally owned by the Hart Family who built the 1820’s structure, had become a dump during the depression. Coker dedicated herself to turning a garbage heap into a free, public garden.

Recently, our team went to Hartsville and filmed at Kalmia Gardens. Director Dan Hill took us down the slope on that property which drops sixty feet to Black Creek. Several plants there are glacial relicts – they moved down ahead of the glaciers during the Pleistocene era.

In cockscomb celosia the fasciation trait is reliably carried in the seeds. Cactus plants also seem to spontaneously develop this peculiar growth habit.

Herrick Brown, now the curator of the A C Moore Herbarium at U S C, visited us recently with eye-popping examples of fasciation in plants.

A native weedy plant, Eupatorium cappilifolium has the common name of dog fennel as supposedly the peculiar smell of crushed stems and leaves is attractive to dogs.

Flowers, of course, are supposed to be perfect and just cut but an arrangement of just flowers can be rather dull – but add an interesting stick or branch to grab your attention and you’ll stop to smell the roses, so to speak.

Herrick Brown is the new curator of the A C Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, taking over from our friend Dr. John – a k a Dr. John Nelson. Fasciation was the feature of some specimens Herrick brought to Making It Grow recently – a weird type of plant growth when the something goes awry in the apical meristem – the specialized group of cells at the tip of a plant –and instead of elongating they flatten out and divide.

The glorious deep purple Judge Solomon Southern Indica hybrid azalea graces many Southern gardens and the drive into our prized national treasure Brookgreen Gardens.

A move to Florida for his health lead to the creation of a real beauty.

Brookgreen Gardens is a national treasure with stunning, sometimes whimsical sculptures set in acres of horticulture splendor. Not long ago, I was visiting, and although beautiful at any time of the year, the long drive in was breathtaking as the Formosa and Judge Solomon, both purple pink but with a subtle difference, were in full flower.

I went to Brookgreen Gardens recently where the drive in was at peak beauty with the Indica azaleas in full bloom. Some of the old Indica azaleas are named for people with curious histories.

When I was young, Momma would sometimes ride us around to look at the beauty of springtime in Columbia. People tended to have the same plants in their yards – backbones of spring beauty were the Southern Indica azaleas, with the scientific name Rhododendrum indicum.

Swamp jessamine doesn’t have the sweet fragrance of yellow jessamine, but it blooms in the spring and the fall.

Our state flower is actually a vine. Yellow Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens.

Common seedling redbuds can grow to twenty feet pretty quickly and that makes it hard for me to reach the flowers which are at the ends of the branches.

Redbuds make our woodlands beautiful with their early purple/pink flowers. Breeders have gone to town with this native and all sorts of cultivars are available.

Cercis canadensis, our native eastern redbud, is an early bloomer. With protein rich pollen and sweet nectar, it’s an important food source for many native bees, including the blueberry bumble bee.