June 2015 in the Southern Hemisphere

[Jupiter]

[Maggi Young]

Crikey, are those coloured leaves  for real?  What a spectacular image, Jamus!

[Jupiter]

Maggi yes that's real. It's an Abutilon x hybridum which is in the nursery trade, intentionally selected because it's infected with a virus! Abutilon Mosaic Virus (Begomovirus AbMV) produces that bold mosaic yellowing which is really quite attractive.

[Anthony Darby]

One of my Albuca spiralis is flowering now, at totally the wrong time of year.

[Jupiter]

Lovely Anthony, after an initial spurt my seedlings are just sitting, forming nice strong bulbs I hope.

[Jupiter]

Happy Solstice my fellow Southern Hemisphere gardeners.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan

[fermi de Sousa]

Happy Solstice!
Now the slow climb back into daylight
cheers
fermi

[David Lyttle]

I had a botanist here in my lab last week helping us identify some Brassicaceae weeds we were sent for virus testing. I knew enough to know that the names the agronomists had attached to them were wildly incorrect. They seem to think they are all called turnip weed and reckon that's close enough!

This one was new to me...

Not something that is immediately familiar to me. It appears from a quick Google search Rapistrum rugosum is something called annual bastard cabbage or turnip weed amongst other things. However it looks to me the first leaf in the line up is something different. There appears to be one record of it on the New Zealand NZPCN site but the plant illustrated there seem to be mis-identified.

[Anthony Darby]

Rapistrum rugosum, or something similar, is a common weed around here, especially on the bare patches of earth created by the "weed spraying round the edges of grassy areas and every tree or bush" policy. My tortoises love it, but the hairs on older leaves make my hands itch.

[Jupiter]

That sounds right Anthony, that one was a hoary little bugger. I confess I can't get my head around all the brassica weeds, just can't remember them. They are an ugly bunch, not much to recommend them. I've been tempted many times to import seed of Crambe cordifolia but I get the uneasy feeling that it could become a pesky weed here and I don't want to be responsible for that.

[Lesley Cox]

Haven't seen Crambe cordifolia for some years though it must be in gardens somewhere. Not in local nurseries though. The one who used to list it has retired and gone to live among the fleshpots, albeit frozen at present, of Queenstown. However I have C. maritima and think it one of my favourite plants. The form I have has very blue foliage and is very good in flower too but chooks eat the flowers so no seed for the last couple of years. Rabbits like the leaves so it's never going to become a weed. It didn't look like that even when we didn't have the animal life.

[Jupiter]

You're talking me around Lesley... I may just order some seed. Carol Klein speaks very highly of it, but I worry in this Mediterranean climate that it may be a little too happy...

Speaking of weeds and of things cordifoliant, is this Cyclamen coum coming up IN my Globularia cordifolia?

[Otto Fauser]

Jamus  , there are a few white flowered Cyclamen coum  (self sown ) next to the Globularia here in my rock garden -so most likely that is what your weeds are .

[Jupiter]

Ah huh! Otto now I need to decide if I should just weed it out or try to rescue it without disturbing the Globularia... impossible me thinks.

[Lesley Cox]

Well Jamus (sorry, I think I called you Jamie before) if you just leave the cyclamen, it will do its thing then die away in due course, coming up each year probably and coping all right. I started with a number of C. coum in different leaf forms and a couple of whites, over about 5 sq metres. They were planted in the autumn 2 and a bit years ago. At the edges of the bed are 8 plants all ground covers and those were supposed to go over the edges and down the 20cms sides But only 2 have done that, a linnaea and a ground-hugging cotoneaster. The other 6 are all creeping - rapidly - towards the centre of the bed where there is a smallish magnolia. In the meantime, the cyclamen are thickening up and coming through the covering plants with no problem at all. The cyclamen leaves and flowers look good on top of an ajuga, the linnaea, Asteranthera ovata and the others. Then soon after I planted the cyclamen and they were up and I could see where they were, I planted 14 bulbs (2 garden centre packets) of Iris reticulata 'Harmony,' singly, and these too have thickened up so that now there are 14 small patches of the iris, some with as many as a dozen flower buds ready to go very soon.  The pinks and white and blue are very nice and the covers keep the weeds down though the rest of the year.