Showing posts with label Brugmansia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brugmansia. Show all posts

Monday, May 24, 2010

Pretty pictures: Pink-Purple to Pink

I've been trying for the last couple weeks or so to sort through the ever-increasing stack of pictures I have, and I have to say, it hasn't actually been going terribly well. It's really time-consuming, and of course I keep taking new pictures as I'm sorting out the old ones, so there's an element of futility to the whole thing.

But, the up side is that I have a bunch of pictures to post now. So here are some. I've decided to go with "pink" as a theme, though the pinkness of some of these is open to debate.

Osteospermum 'Summertime Hot Pink.' Kind of more purple-looking, in this picture. I don't remember exactly if it was really this color.


Clematis 'Nelly Moser?' This is growing in someone's yard in town, so there was no actual ID on it, but I think, after seeing a picture of 'Nelly Moser' at Best in Bloom Today, that's probably what this is. The colors are right, at least, and lynn'sgarden says in the post that it's a popular variety. I wish I'd fiddled with the color a little bit longer; the color here seems a little dull, compared to reality. Oh well.


Catharanthus roseus 'Titan Rose.' One of the things that most pleases me about no longer working at the garden center is that I don't have to deal with the vinca (it's not Vinca, though) anymore. I had bad associations with them anyway, having been forced to plant them once in junior high, at school, for "P.E.," which is a long story and not really the point, but at work, they always had spider mites, and frequently tried to go chlorotic on us, and I just really kind of hate them.


Most everybody still calls this Dicentra spectabilis, but I have it on pretty good authority that the correct name is Lamprocapnos spectabilis. Everybody in town has like six of these, but they're cool plants regardless.


Gaura NOID (possibly G. lindheimeri 'Karalee Pink'). I like these okay, but never see any planted anywhere. I have no idea where they're all going or who they sell to.


Begonia NOID. These are sold as "nonstop begonias," but I don't know if that's an official cultivar name or not. Despite the name, if overwatered, they will stop just fine.


Brugmansia NOID. Every year since 2007, I see these, and my jaw drops and I think I must get a Brugmansia this year, and then every year, fear of spider mites keeps me from actually getting one. We saw this one, and a few others, within the last week, but this one was big and expensive, and the others were doubled varieties (purple/white and yellow). I do not like the doubled Brugmansias and find them unsettling in some difficult-to-explain way. Will this be the year I get one? Maybe. The pink ones are really beautiful.


Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Question for the Hive Mind: It Smelled Like Cookies

I predict I'm going to feel stupid for asking this soon, but I must know what this is:

(Flowers, some foliage. Color is approximately true.)

(Fruits. Degree of ripeness unknown.)

Piersons had them in Cedar Rapids when we visited. My sense of smell is fairly sensitive but not particularly well-calibrated (I smell odd, random things that nobody else can smell, or that others can smell but don't think they smell like what I think they smell like, fairly regularly), so I don't know how many people would share my impression, but to me, the flowers smelled considerably like freshly-baked sugar cookies. Which I think we can agree is a strange thing for flowers to smell like.

I had the husband check it out too, and he said, "anise?" Which, I dunno, maybe. (The husband's nose is, he claims, of low sensitivity and unknown accuracy.) I'm not particularly clear on what anise smells like.

I probably should have just asked at Piersons, but I'd already asked a Brugmansia question that occupied the entire staff for a good fifteen minutes or so, and it didn't seem right to get everybody running all over again. (I only wanted to know whether the smallish, flowerless $10 Brugmansias they had were the same variety as the larger, more expensive one with gorgeous pink-orange blooms they had at the door. Nobody knew for sure, though they told me yes, probably, to try to make the sale anyway. The husband talked me out of buying one. Or, more accurately, I think I talked him into talking me out of buying one, and then resented him for doing so, if you follow me. So now I have acute Brugmansia envy.)

But back to the plant at hand: I'm fairly certain we never had this where I worked, and it doesn't seem like an indoor kind of plant, but that's as much as I know. Anybody?

UPDATE: Savannah, by e-mail, suggests Duranta erecta 'Geisha Girl' (which may or may not be the same as 'Sweet Memories'). Not positive about the cultivar, but the davesgarden.com profile for 'Sweet Memories' includes a comment that it smells like chocolate, the profile for 'Geisha Girl' includes a description of the fragrance as vanilla, and the profile for the (also blue) 'Sapphire Showers' says "flowers have a light candy-like fragrance." So we're definitely in an edible-smelling neighborhood, and I'm fairly certain this is the right species, whatever the variety.

Also, as best as I can tell, they're not at all indoor plants, and are sometimes problematic plants outdoors too. Which I'd suspected.

Thanks, Savannah!