So here is mine. This chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata. After 8 years of growing this plant it finally had a baby. I had watched the seedling over the past few weeks but wasn't completely sure about its identity until I saw the characteristic flower bud forming. Many times in the past I have seen similar leaves and they have all turned out to be blanket flowers.
It has settled itself in very close to mother, between one of the pavers in the vegetable garden, and has topped the mother plant to produce the first flower of the season.
I do have one other chocolate daisy in the sunken garden. It is back again this year opening multiple buds over the last few days. But for all its years of living there it has never once produced a baby.
It seems to favor this spot among pavers where its roots are protected. At the Wildflower Center chocolate daisies grow to be 3' tall but this one never gets much larger than this. It usually gets one cut back during the summer resulting in a further flush of blooms later in the season.
I year ago in October I planted this red veined sorrel in the herb garden. As soon as any leaves grew they would be eaten, probably by those decollate snails. I have made a concerted effort to reduce their numbers and suddenly leaves started to poke through the soil. After our terrible winter it is hard to believe that the plant had survived. Both plants have returned and hopefully will have a better year.
This may look like a regular bearded iris but it is a dwarf variety. It stands only 6" high. I picked this up in Boise at a Saturday market 3 years ago. It is the first time it has bloomed or rather the first time I have seen it bloom. Almost smothered by yarrow leaves I just caught a glimpse of it as I walked by. I think a more prominent location next year.
A real turn up for the books.
I've never heard that expression but it certainly looks as though you had a happy turn about the garden. The little, unexpected discoveries can brighten one's entire day, can't they?
ReplyDeleteI've had those unexpected plants come up in my garden as well. I always look at them as my gardening trophies. A win kind of, sort of.
ReplyDeleteAll so beautiful... Vera
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Your sorrel is GORGEOUS--I knew what that was the second I saw it. I've been wanting to try that for 2 years now. It's so pretty.
ReplyDeleteThose leaves on the choc. daisy do look like gaillardia. Interesting......
I think the true turn up for the books is that of the baby plant's - your chocolate daisy finding such an amazing home where it will be kept company all its days by hundreds if not thousands of happy companions. Then there is the rest of us who are allowed peeks into your gardens via this blog. That luck is sure enough traveling all around!
ReplyDeleteI have trouble telling the chocolate daisy leaves from cutleaf daisy. I am trying to remove cutleaf daisies from my garden because they reseed so much. I really like your bluebonnet photos in the previous post, especially the first one.
ReplyDeleteI have only one chocolate daisy, a four-year old plant. Last year I did not cut it back at all and it put forth a thin runner above ground which produced two little plantlets. I bent these down to touch the soil and secured the runner in place with rocks, but they did not "take". I wonder if I should have cut them off and potted them up instead. Evidently your baby was produced by seed?
ReplyDeleteLove the chocolate daisy. I knew you had a penchant for them, but didn’t know your history. I can see why you’d be so excited about this new baby. Love the dwarf iris - I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.
ReplyDeleteGrats on the chocolate daisy baby.
ReplyDeleteI always thought decollate snails were friends: predators of the other snails. Are they also herbivores?
Yay for propagation! Beautiful!
ReplyDeleteDang that iris is pretty.
ReplyDeleteI've got a bunch of what I'm assuming are Engelmann's Daisies popping up in my yard. I won't know until they bloom, though.
At the gardens where I work, we planted many red-veined sorrel this past fall as a winter annual. Like many places our winter was unusually cold, but the sorrel sailed through unscathed where many other plants withered.
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