Jeffersonia

Cleaning up around a clump of Jeffersonia dyphylla, I thought I'd clear around the plump resting buds to reveal them, normally just barely visible unless the top layer of leaf mold and soil is scratched away.  Also seen, is a fine network of roots.  After the photo, the buds were recovered for a safe winter rest.  Trond, maybe these types of leaf buds would not last in your area if they're attractive to slugs.

I would agree Dave, looks like Jeffersonia diphylla to me too.  It will fit in nicely with your trillium collection.  When it does flower (will take several years from seed), be sure to watch the buds closely, the flowers are fleeting and may only last but 1 day (in warm temperature) or up to 3-4 days with cool weather.  Even so, this is an excellent plant.

Abnormally warm weather has brought about particularly early bloom in the garden, and in just a few days Jeffersonia have gone from no visible signs of sprouting to being in flower.  Today however is cold and dreary, so the first flowers are closed tightly.  I hope the predicted deep freezing nights for the next several nights doesn't do too much damage.

Jeffersonia diphylla was way behind J. dubia in emerging, but it caught up, to flower at the same time.

Left:  from a previous year's in-situ seed sowing of Jeffersonia dubia in a large patch of ground, are seedlings entering their second year of growth just emerging.
Right: from 2011 seed sowing of 5 flats of Jeffersonia dubia, they're all coming up thickly, as are 2 flats of J. diphylla.  In  the photo, the first seedlings showing, many many more are just breaking surface (can't see that in the photo) and others still germinating and pushing the soil surface upward.  Taking no risk, I'm bringing the flats inside for 3-4 days until the temperatures moderate.

Hmmm, interesting.  My J. dubia tend to show buds first but quickly by the time buds are ready to open there are young leaves, so I have always thought it as having simultaneous bud/leaf growth.  Could be that the extra warmth this spring is causing aberrant behavior, shooting buds up before leaves have had a chance. But my goodness, look at all them buds, going to be quite a sight soon.

Rick, do you get germination with the seed?  I'm always surprised that this plant is so expensive to purchase, when they make so much seed and seem very easy to germinate and grow on.

Lori wrote:

Great to see your Jeffersonia so advanced, Mark.   Can't wait to see those pristine buds open.  (And look at that beautiful trillium in the background too.)

You'll need to watch it, though - they're practically getting to be weeds.   ;D ;D  

Well, I'm hoping to replace much of my lawn with Jeffersonia ;D  The trillium in the background is T. foetidissimum; I have several different ones, they are among the earliest to bud up.

Cohan and others, I hope to report back next weekend after the freezing weather, to see what transpires.

Interesting that you have a J. dubia that is sterile, and one that produces extra petals!  All of mine are fertile and are normal in terms of petal count.  Lots of little diphylla "jeffs" in your photo.  Do you pot any of these up for your NARGS chapter sales, or is J. diphylla considered too common thus not a big "mover" in the local plant sales.  I used to be down on this plant because flowers only last a 2-3 days, but over time I've grown very fond of it for the unique foliage, intriguing seed pods, and the untapped variability; an all around great native plant.

Rick, good to learn that J. diphylla is actually appreciated at your plant society sales; though, hard to believe that the dubia plants don't always sell out!

Francis, hope your Jeffersonias are ok after the frost, they were unfazed by the freezing cold snap here.  Good that you now have both species, as J. dubia is such a delight too.

Trond, will have to send you some seed this year. :)

Tony, having just one plant of each species, you are fortunate to get seed and good germination on both, congratulations.

To compare seedlings of bothy species.

I have multiple flats of Jeffersonia dubia germinating thickly.  I use decomposed pine bark mulch as seed cover, the flats left out to weather all winter.  They germinate so profusely that germination tends to lift the whole bark mulch "crust" up; I try to gingerly tamp it back down and poke to break the crust up, I should probably use something else for seed cover.  When I jest that I want to replace parts of my lawn with Jeffersonia, I do so with a degree of seriousness, I want a Jeffersonian lawn :D

Two years ago after posting photos of my seed harvest and sowing of Jeffersonia diphylla on SRGC, I received some feedback that I harvested seed too early which lessens viability of the seed, eg. harvested before peak viability.  Last summer I harvested seed as I do normally, just before pods split wide open, when the "lid" on the pipe-shaped pod will easily "pop" with the slightest squeeze, or the lid seam visibly starting to separate. Because pods ripen and pop open so fast, a half day delay can be too late and all seeds spills out (when that happens, I've been known to rout around the base of mother Jeffersonia hand picking seeds found among the leaf litter ::) ).  Seed is sown immediately in flats, covered thinly with soil and then a layer of pine barch mulch, kept cool and shaded and just moist through summer, left out all winter. Flats are covered with wire cloth to keep chipmunks and squirrels from digging and eating the seed.  As with easy-germinator J. dubia, my 3 flats of J. diphylla are coming up so thickly as to raise the bark mulch "crust".  Below is a photo of both species; a bit hard to see with J. diphylla, the seedlings are smaller and come up a little bit later than J. dubia, and are an earthy camouflage beige color.

Jeffersonia dubia germination:

Jeffersonia diphylla germination:

OMG, your multiple-petaled form is very choice, such full rounded flowers; maybe make some divisions of that one ;) 8) 

You're having a better flowering season for them than I am.  Today I was home because my car broke down (hurrah), which as it turns out, gave me a day to look at plants in bloom on a sunny day at long last, and the Jeffersonias, which have been in closed bloom for weeks, finally partially opened their flowers today.  Jeffersonia diphylla is ready to bloom too, but with the next 3 workdays predicted to be sunny, I'll probably miss seeing them, let alone attempt a second time to cross the two species.

A few views of Jeffersonia today.

Left, J. dubia (above the main plant, are dozens of seedlings).
Right, J. dubia Korean Form, with red versus green ovaries.

J. diphylla ready to pop open, I think I might miss the bloom during the work week.

Two close-ups of J. diphylla seedlings.

I only divided Jeffersonia dubia once before.  I received my plants from nearby friend and fellow rock gardener Marsha Russell, she was clearing out much of her garden in preparation for eventually moving (ultimately she decided not to move afterall), we dug a couple large clumps late in the season (late summer or fall, can't remember exactly when).  They have a massive root system, and I pulled apart the large clumps into smaller pieces, and fortunately all acclimated just fine. The time of year was by chosen by necessity of the intended house move situation, not by any insightful experience with moving and dividing Jeffersonia.  Not sure if we were just luckly or if late summer is actually a good time for such an operation.

Home again on a sunny but cold day, too cold for Jeffersonia flowers to open much, with J. diphylla's buds still tightly clenched. One good thing about the coolness, the flowers last longer. 

Left:  J. dubia trying it's best to open flowers.  I spied some pods just starting to form on some plants.
Right: J. dubia Korean Form, a better overhead view to show the red ovaries and dark stamens.

Left:  Jeffersonia dubia, 2-year old sown-in-place seedlings starting to grow.
Right: These dang weeds are popping up everywhere!  ;)

Left:    Jeffersonia diphylla - a clump looking pretty good, with lots of flower buds.  If they open soon, I might get a chance to attempt dabbing J. dubia pollen on the flowers for another try at crossing the two species.
Right:  Another view in afternoon light today, the flowers stems leaning towards the sun.

Hoy wrote:

Do the Koren form and the other cross?  - or I mean, can you discern the hybrids?

Haven't tried.  The Korean form is only noticeably different from the regular form of J. dubia by virtue of the red ovary and dark stamens, versus green ovary and light color stamens in regular J. dubia. Much rather try crossing the two species, instead of figuring subtle differences between the same species.

I only have a few sown-in-place 2 year seedlings of the Korean form coming a long, then a potful of fresh seedlings from last summer sowing.  This Korean form was a relatively new (going on 3 years) acquisition from Darrell Probst.

With cool weather, Jeffersonia diphylla has been in bud for 1-1/2 weeks, but not warm enough to open its flowers.  Of course, with warmer temperatures during the work week, the flowers certainly did open, but I missed seeing them open for 2012 :(. Inspecting the plants tonight at dusk after I got home, the petals had fallen and small developing seed pods have begun to form.

Last summer (2011) I rowed out lots of seedlings of my attempted cross of J. dubia x diphyllum.  The area where I planted them was subject to continued disturbance by mole tunneling, and despite attempts to bait, the tunneling continued.  The photo I show below was taken a few days ago, it is not staged, it is what I actually came upon, I think the varmints are mocking me, not only did they tunnel, but they actually tunneled such that the labels fell into a mole hole!  So far I don't see a single young Jeffersonia seedling leafing out (all the other Jeffersonia seedlings have been up for a couple weeks or more), so I'm beginning to think this bed is a total failure.

While I have missed opportunity to try crossing the two species again in 2012, thank goodness I have many pink-stemmed baby J. diphylla (just the regular species) to plant around the garden this year. They are the cutest little seedlings.

RickR wrote:

The pods as lidded scepters above the foliage is quite attractive, Mark.  I've never noticed that on mine...

I'll have to take better note this spring.  They'll be blooming any day now.

Soon after flowering and the production of "lidded sceptars" (good description Rick) the foliage will overtake them where they will be shaded and concealed by the ornamental foliage.

Today I noticed something I have not noticed before.  In a different part of my property (the wild wooded part, not the garden area), where Jeffersonia diphylla is several days behind the flowering schedule of the same species in my garden in a more open and warmer spot, they were still in bud.  I went to photograph them, then witnessed a remarkable thing, the bud sheath, which becomes detached from the base and was at a stage where it partially constricts the opening of the flowers,  suddenly pops off from the pressure of the expanding buds and the tightly closed white flower sprung open in real-time, in a couple seconds, just like the way some "evening primroses" (Oenothera species) will pop open at dusk so fast that its fun to watch such miraculous "plant movement".  I had no idea that Jeffersonia diphylla flowers are "spring loaded" and open with such speed.

In the first photo, you can see the translucent green bud sheath at the top of the white bud.  At some point the sheath will just pop off and the flowers spring open in a couple of seconds.

In this photo, I noticed further down on my dry wooded hillside, two white flowers with looked like Sanguinaria from afar.  When I got up close, I can see it is J. diphylla with the 8-petaled flowers fully open mimicking a bloodroot,  In the photo, you'll notice lots of foliage of Garlic Mustard or Alliaria petiolata which is invading New England, and only showed up in my property a couple years ago, but already it has spread with explosive abandon.

Today I went and gathered some self-sown J. diphylla plants down in my dry woods area.  They have a fine mass of roots and are easily moved and replanted. Shown are 2 - 3 year seedling plants.

The Jeffersonia seedlings are growing fast, but to my surprise, the later germinating J. diphylla has caught up and overtaken J. dubia in growth.  Now I'm wondering if I will manage to get all of these planted, I have 5 flats of dubia (1 flat seen in the upper left) and 3 flats of diphylla (2 seen in the photo, lower left and upper right).  To ease my Jeffersonia burdon, I think I'll donate one flat of J. dubia seedlings to a NARGS New England Chapter meeting plant sale on Saturday. :D

RickR wrote:

Same here: J. diphylla is later, but once it decides to grow, it really takes off. How old are those seedlings, Mark?

Not very old, I posted a photo earlier in this topic that shows the seedling just breaking ground, that was March 25th!  So these seedlings are not quite a month old.  I think the unusually warm weather and lots of sunny days is bringing them on speadily.  Plus I try to remember to water them adequately while actively growing.
http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=181.msg16064#msg16064

Since our Jeffersonia are just lovely foliage now, good to again see the beautiful blooms.  Wow, 26 C (77 F) is a warm day, you'll have plants and flowers popping all over the place.  I'm amazed at just how fast plants can open flowers when they receive full days of warmth.

I saw this link on an SRGC post that shows a very full-flowered form of J. dubia similar to Rick's fine form:
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=9018.msg245568#msg245568
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=9018.0;attach=...

Seedlings of J. diphylla are growing lustily, now I'm worried about being able to make a new woodland bed large enough to hold them all, the start of my "Jeffersonian woodland lawn".  In the overhead view (photo 1), you can see equally full flats of J. dubia in the back (center and to the left).