Monday, June 15, 2009

Question for the Hive Mind: NOID outdoor plant

Although a lot of them got trampled when the new windows were put in for the plant room (Pictures of the plant room are still pending. The plants and I plan to retake some of the territory in the East Living Room region, which will depend on repelling the forces of Paint and Painting Accessories. Meanwhile, the refugees continue to occupy all available surfaces in the plant room.), the previous owners of our house apparently planted a bunch of these things with yellow flowers. Before they flowered, I thought I knew what they were (though I don't remember what my theory was), but now I'm thinking Sedum of some kind? Maybe?


At the very least, the flowers look remarkably like the flowers of the Sedum 'Lemon Coral' I posted about in May: also yellow, also five-petaled, with five long anthers (they are anthers, right? Never let it be said that I claim to have all the anthers.) situated between petals. I mean, the similarities are definitely there, though the rest of the plants don't look particularly alike.


I know you can't really see the leaves and habit all that well in these pictures, but if anybody has any more specific theories about IDs, I'd welcome hearing them. I don't know if I need twenty square feet of them, but they're interesting plants, and it'd be nice to be more certain about what they are before I start making decisions about how many I want and where I want them.


4 comments:

Claude said...

That is Russian Stonecrop, one of the varieties of Sedum kamtschaticum. That particular species is highly variable and has many varieties, I don't know which one exactly... this is the one that's also commonly known as Live-Forever. It is easy to grow, and is a common "pass-along" plant, that you usually got a clump of from your moms house throughout the midwest, Plantings of it were sometimes used as a sort of weed barrier around trees, foundations, or anywhere you wanted something besides bare dirt. Looks a lot like Pachysandria, doesn't it?

Claude said...

A little research on the web tells me that it's sedum kamtschaticum ellacombianum. Nice to know exactly what I've got growing under my yuccas...

It's an easy plant. You can pretty much forget it's there and let it do it's thing.

Karen715 said...

I agree with Claude's ID. I have lots of this, which I grew from seed. It does make a lovely ground cover, and stands up well to sun, clay soil, dryness, moisture, heat, and cold Illinois winters.

I love the stuff.

mr_subjunctive said...

Yes! Pachysandra is what I was thinking -- until it bloomed.

I guess it will stay, then. I do like it okay, and davesgarden.com commenters say it's pretty manageable.