I hardly dare ask any more, since I have so many misidentified plants around :-) - but here goes. The plant that I've grown for many years, always assuming that it was Arabis androsacea (since that's how the seed it grew from was labeled), looks nothing like the real thing. While it's not a stunner, I like it for its early-spring blooms and its non-intrusive habit: just single rosettes with a single flower stalk. Can you help me put a name to it?
Here are some photos of Draba ventosa, which is an alpine that is native to Alberta, BC, and the Yukon, and down into Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
These photos are taken in cultivation:
Growing in one of my troughs, and not looking like any of the draba species I've grown from seed in recent years. I can't find a match for the shape of the basal foliage combined with the leafyness of the flower stem. Any ideas?
What is this? Lesquerella arizonica (as it was labeled at purchase, years ago) or Degenia velebitica?
Only one of my plants grown from last year's seedex selection of Draba norvegica survived, and is now blooming. It doesn't look much like online photos of the species. Any thoughts as to what it is?
Thanks!
Rob
Be of good cheer! The Drabas are here! Starting here at home:
Draba1; seed collected on one of the more "spare" boulders in a Bighorn Mountain meadow in 2009. It is always tiny and has needle-like leaves. Seed was sown on one of my "scattertroughs!" -no bother about actually trying to grow it which doesn't always work anyway.
Draba2; I believe came from Beartooth Pass many years ago. I can't say for sure how it got at the base of my front spruce -I never put a plant there -but it is really happy where it put itself. I've put seed on NARGS as D. oligosperma.
This has done really well this year, in the Alpine House. The label was put in for size comparison.
Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides is a dryland pink or violet, perennial Wallflower. It is found on dry rocky hills and ridges in CA, OR, WA, NV, ID and UT. It grows as a mound up to a foot across and about ten inches tall. The gray lance-shaped leaves are four to six inches long, with a short, soft covering of forked hairs. The flower racemes stand vertical to about ten to twelve inches. The seed pods when ripe stand horizontal to the flower stems, giving it it's common name of Dagger Pod.
There is no accounting for tastes, and mine tend towards plants that like me....and crucifers are easily grown from seed, easily accommodated, and I love their brash yellows, pinks and purples (and of course whites)...a few that will be blooming in a few months (and I will be too preoccupied to talk about then) are posted below: The first is Coluteocarpus vesicarius, from Turkey, a plant that seems to be of interest only to plant nerds. But I find it charming.