When we do garden travel, we see a lot of plants that we grow in our gardens, but we also see some we need to grow, and some we never can. But we learn about plants. Even if some of you missed the exact plant this week, your knowledge of plants was evident in your guesses, and many came really close. No one can ever know every plant that is on this planet, but learning about plant families can give us a starting point to figure them out.
Ivy Geranium – Pelargonium peltatum is a vining form of geranium with ivy-shaped foliage. This annual is often used in hanging baskets.
Flower color can be shades of pink, red, purple or white.
As with most geraniums grown in the south, it would benefit from a little shade in the afternoon when the temperatures get hotter. We saw it all over Italy used in window boxes, or trailing down the side of a home.
Lovely.
Planetree or London planetree – Platanus x acerifolia
– is a hybrid from a cross between our native sycamore (Platanus occidentalis)
and the Asian planetree Platanus orientalis. It was hybridized in the 16th century. It produces a large tree with beautiful peeling bark, which some compared to camouflage.
It can grow up to 100 feet tall. Because it can withstand pollution easily, it was widely planted in London, where it was so commonplace that many call it the London planetree. It is commonly planted throughout Europe. It also withstands heavy pruning and pollarding.
We saw many unique examples of pruning and training in Italy. On Lake Como, they were using them almost as a table umbrella substitute with the way the trees were trained.
They were pretty with leaves on them, but may resemble a larger version our murdered crape myrtles in the winter! The leaves are not quite as large as our sycamore and it tends to be less messy than our sycamore, but it can grow quite large if left to its own devices.
Ephedera or Joint fir or Joint Pine
is a small evergreen shrub with a profusion of stiff, leafless stems. It is actually a gymnosperm, like pines, cedars and junipers. There are 40 known species of this plants, many of which are native to the Southwestern states, along with Mexico, southern Europe, northern Africa, Asia, China and South America. Clusters of small frilly flowers bloom in the spring on female plants.
It is extremely cold and heat tolerant, and also quite drought tolerant. Most people know of Ephedra, not as plants from the garden, but from the herbal remedies produced by the Asian species Ephedera sinica which gained wide acclaim as a diet pill. Its amphetamine-like properties – primarily related to the chemical alkaloid ephedrine – lead to its used as performance enhancing drug in sporting events and weight loss concoctions. It is not the most attractive plant, but we have seen it in Italy and in Scotland.
Some of you guessed broom-and it was a good guess, since they too have the small stiff leafless stems, but much prettier flowers.
Sorbus domestica – Service tree
is a wild fruit tree native to Europe. It produces small apple-like fruits.
Service tree can be used for ornamental purposes, wood and fruit production. The fruits can be eaten when bletted (over-ripe), or are used to produce marmalades, jams, jellies, juices, fruit wine or other alcoholic drinks. Some of you guessed Mountain Ash or Rowan tree,
which is Sorbus aucuparia, (same genus, different species) a beautiful ornamental tree steeped in mythology. We can’t grow it well in Arkansas either. It doesn’t like the heat and humidity of an Arkansas summer. Both trees have compound leaves.