After visiting the Sierra Chincua Monarch Sanctuary, we spend the night at the village of Angangueo. A booming mining town at one time, Angangueo is located at an altitude of about 8,400 ft. Around this same time last year, this village was devastated by heavy rains and accompanying mud slides, which closed the whole village for several days causing economic hardship to the local folks dependent of tourists visiting Monarch butterfly sanctuaries. Remnants of the damage cause by the mudslide are still visible. On this third day, we leave early to the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, which is about an hour’s drive from town. A major portion of the road to the sanctuary is unpaved and hence we are transported to the site on a pick-up truck. A major portion of the hike through the forest has paved steps, followed by well maintained dirt trails. Compared to Sierra Chincua, the forest in El Rosario has much denser understory vegetation dominated by plants in the Asteraceae and Lamiaceae families, all providing nectar for the active butterflies. An hour’s hike takes us to our destination where the Monarch butterflies are congregating, at an altitude of about 11,000 ft. The millions of hibernating butterflies are slowly waking up with the rise in temperature. Many trees are completely covered in butterflies, with many branches drooping down with the weight of the butterflies. These butterflies will soon be getting ready to start their migration back north in search of milkweed plants to lay their eggs. We see a few mating pairs. Before long, by early-mid March, all these butterflies will be gone, renewing their life cycle with a new generation. We spend an hour at the site just watching these butterflies and marveling at this remarkable natural phenomenon. After two incredible days of viewing the Monarch butterflies, we continue on with our trip and head towards Patzcuaro.</p>
As this popular trip offered by Denver Botanic Gardens and Reefs to Rockies returns this year, I am pleased to lead this trip again. Joining me are seven enthusiastic patrons of the Gardens and nature lovers. What is a trip without any travel glitches? Icy conditions in Houston, cancelled flights, delayed and missed flights….these were some of the few glitches we experienced, but everyone got to Morelia on time and with good humor. And so our first scheduled day of the trip starts without a hitch! Morelia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site is the capital of the state of Michoacán in central Mexico. Located in the Guayangareo Valley, this is home to the indigenous Purhepecha peoples. Named in honor of José María Morelos y Pavón, a revolutionary rebel leader of the Mexican War of Independence, the heart of the city is dominated by colonial buildings including numerous churches and the impressive Cathedral of the Devine Savior of Morelia. Another prominent architectural feature of the city is the aqueduct. We start our day with a walk from our hotel to the Museo del Dulche (Candy Museum). This museum was created to preserve the candy making history of the local people. We are greeted by staff dressed in vintage costumes dating back to the 1900s and are given a demonstration of the candy making process, with some sampling. We have an opportunity to purchase candies from the museum store. After visiting a local handicrafts store we have an authentic lunch of regional flavor at a local restaurant. A trolley picks us up to take us on a tour of the city where all the important landmarks are pointed out. The highlight of the tour is the Sanctuary of Guadalupe, where the church decoration is influenced by Mexican artistry rather than Spanish. As we wind down this day, we all look forward to what is to come tomorrow, a visit to one of the Monarch butterfly wintering sites!</p>
Sometimes we have plants growing in our garden collections that aren't quite who we thought they were. Usually when we receive a new accession into the living collections, we have information of what the name of the plant is, where it came from (nursery or collection site in nature) and if it is a seed, cutting or plant. Fortunately, 99.9% of the time, the listed name is correct. Unfortunately this 0.1% can create a plant "identity crisis" for us! Recently this occurred for a tree growing in the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. It had been labeled as Garcinia mangostana</em> (mangosteen, a tropical fruiting tree) and in the 8 years that I walked past the tree, mapped it, photographed it in flower and wondered if it would ever fruit, I took it for granted that it was, in fact, Garcinia mangostana</em>. A researcher from Kew Gardens in England contacted me to learn more about the G. mangostana</em> and how it was doing in our conservatory. I proclaimed that it was healthy, about 20 feet tall and had flowered but never fruited. The researcher's excitement at this communication made me wonder what was so special about this plant which I then Googled, took one look at the pictures of the flowers and said "Oh no!" You see, the images were of medium-sized pale pink flowers and our plant's flowers are extremely white and miniscule in size. So this is when the fun really begins to find the true identity of an unknown plant. I looked up all the inf0rmation I could find about the accession, including the nursery we originally received the plant from. I checked out their online catalog to see which plants they carry that could match our unknown plant. I also e-mailed that nursery and attached a digital image of our tree in flower to see if I could get any further information. But I didn't hear back from them. During this time I continued to communicate with the researcher, sharing information about the leaf size and shape, bark coloration and any other details I could discern from our currently non-blooming plant. I sent additional images as well. I also took a leaf and stem sample to see if there was any latex in the plant, and if so, what color it was. (It was white.) While waiting for information from her and the herbarium at Kew, I continued to research this plant too. My first searches in the Helen Fowler Library yielded no help as I didn't know where this tree might be native to. I was limited to titles like Tropical Trees, Tropical Ornamentals and Identification of tropical woody plants in the absence of flowers and fruits. All of these references might have been handy, just not for this particular mystery plant. Part of the mystery was also verifying that this plant was even still in the same genus or family as the original identity suggested. To do this, I skimmed through Flowering Plants of the World by V.H. Heywood to see what other possible families it might belong to including the Clusiaceae family that was its original identity. My list included about 10 families, including Clusiaceae, that have opposite leaves, latex, lack stipules on the leaves and include woody plants. As a starting point to my research, I decided to look at what plants in Clusiaceae, starting with the genus Garcinia, </em>are in other botanic gardens since chances were good that this was not the most uncommon plant in the world, just rather uncommon in Denver. A Web search of a collections sharing site yielded four species in cultivation. Garcinia acuminata</em>, G. brasiliensis</em> and G. tinctoria</em> at The New York Botanical Garden and G. spicata</em> at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. Edinburgh also yielded a long list of herbarium specimens from tropical Asia. I decided to start my search with G. spicata</em>, just by chance, and the first image that I saw that was not of a fruit, was an amazing match to our unknown plant. The challenge though was that the Web page I was directed to was in Chinese and I never have quite trusted the Google translate tool to be 100% correct, so I was left questioning if the image was really for the species I had queried. So where to from here??? My next search was to determine where this species was native to in hopes of finding a key to help me verify a match. For this search I went to a couple of handy online databases that we commonly use to track plant names in our local database, GRIN Taxonomy and Tropicos. Through these sites I learned that the species is native to Sri Lanka and India, so it was back to the library for me. My initial search in the electronic card catalog taught me that Sri Lanka was once known as Ceylon and from this information I found A Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon and in it a description of G. spicata</em>. From the image you might notice that there are almost handlike structures that are the stamens (the male part). The description from the flora of this structure was the key to this identification,</p> "Stamens combined into 5 erect, spathulate bundles of 8-10 each."</p> Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! Armed with this information, I contacted Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden with a description of our plant and an image of the flower. The curator of tropical fruit, Richard Campbell, confirmed that yes, it was indeed a match to their G. spicata</em> plants. Mystery solved. To follow up on this new information, the proper name was recorded in our database for this plant and a new label will be ordered for it this spring.</p> And now I can continue on to find the next mystery plant's true identity.</p>
This past fall (as if overnight) a conflagration of spectacular red trees glowed for weeks all over Denver...friends and members of the Gardens would ask me what are</strong> those fabulous maples? They are very appropriately named 'Autumn Blaze', a hybrid of silver maple (Acer saccharinum</em>) and red maple (Acer rubrum</em>), combining the spectacular fall color of the latter with the adaptability and vigor of the first. With perhaps a little added hybrid vigor tossed in as well. Considering the plant was only introduced into cultivation in 1980, its ubiquity and abundance in cities across America is sobering. Tree experts are concerned that as these mature they are apt to develop the same breakage problems as the parents (possibly more due to rapid growth), and likewise share the sensitivity to alkaline soil that often turn both parents chlorotic in midsummer. Everyone wants a tree that grows super fast, forgetting that this often means the same tree can grow massive in short order, and is often prone to spectacular and expensive breakage. No one really knows how big 'Autumn Blaze' will grow in Colorado, nor really how brittle it will truly be in old age. Perhaps this is a plant best enjoyed in your neighbor's</strong></em> garden? What an amazing impact, however, the bright red has all over our region, especially combined with the brilliant purple tones of 'Autumn Purple' ash (Fraxinus americana</em>): they have done much to enrich the color palette of our predominately yellow fall color. The ash, however, also needs lots of water to do well and has a host of present and potential pest problems! Coloradoans like to think every tree is wonderful on our windy steppe. I caution friends to stick with tried and true trees in their own gardens. There is a whole list of Index expuragoria</em> when it comes to some arborists: either they are excessively prone to disease and pests, or subject to breakage or too water demanding. I shall take a look at several of these naughty trees...but it is good to remember that if a tree may not be ideal in your garden, it doesn't mean that it would not be suitable in a park or other large site. I for one delight in the spectacle that 'Autumn Blaze' has brought to our city. But you will not see one in my garden!</p>
You would have to be a very strange individual to drive down York street on a sunny morning any time this winter and not notice (or really be stunned) by this amazing planting of little bluestem on the 'West wedge' of the new parking structure.I am not big on formal bedding (by and large) - check out the big bluestem at the bottom of this blog and you will see what suits my taste more - but I'll make an exception for this delightful concatenation. Just like ruddy soldiers, the bluestems are neatly aligned with the morning sun burnishing their symmetrical rosiness! Let's take a closer look... This is a clump of bluestem I photographed closer up last year at the Pueblo Nature Center. If you examine bluestems closely in nature (they are abundant around Denver in the fragments of nature still left) you will find a great deal of variation. Most of the cultivated forms turn a brilliant pink in autumn that lingers through the winter and is positively dazzling in the right backlight. Shopping centers are chockablock full of Calamagrostis</em> 'Karl Foerster' which legions of landscapers are busy cropping down to crew cuts as we speak. I have railed against this abomination before. I would be thrilled if they would replace all those tedious Foerster grasses with this infinitely lovelier native that would not even need to be irrigated! Now let's take a gander at its taller cousin... I took this picture recently in the Ponderosa Border, the easternmost panel of the Western Panoramas--those four magnificent gardens that flank the amphitheater. Casual concert-goers and visitors with an untrained eye walk by these not realizing that these four gardens adumbrate our natural environment as subtly and profoundly as Bach's Brandenberg concertos celebrate the life force! Our masterful Assistant Director of Horticulture, Dan Johnson, designed these four season gardens almost a decade ago, each panel being a symphonic tribute to an ecosystem in Colorado. The Ponderosa Border celebrates the foothills, and big bluestem is indeed found occasionally on the piedmont mesas near us. Usually at least twice the height of little bluestem, this gorgeous giant of a grass can grow five feet tall with a bit of water (or even taller on the tallgrass prairies of the Midwest where it is a major constituent). It may not overwhelm or kick you in the eye like a scarlet geranium or azalea in full bloom, but the graceful fountain of rosy purple is thoroughly dramatic for those more in tune with nature's rhythms. These two magnificent native grasses give me a thrill whenever I walk by. You can have your electronic gadgets, your television and mass culture. Give me a gentle breeze, a bluestem (either one) and a kiss of the Colorado winter sun and I'm a happy camper!</p>
</p> These pictures were all taken exactly one month ago: most years we have a dusting of snow by early October, and light frosts, but this amazing year the autumn wore on and on. But by Thanksgiving, winter rules the roost. Each year I am astonished at how utterly the landscape transforms with the first hard frosts: one day things look almost summery, with fuchsias dangling in the gentle breeze, annuals in prime form and blazing fall color everywhere. Abruptly, the leaves fall, the tender plants are crisped and hardy plants hunker down.</p> </dt> Cardoon and giant Castor beans</dd> </dl> In the sere winter months (which have their own austere beauty, I admit), we forget how lush things were just yesterday: the giant Cardoons spreading almost six feet across, and towering Castor beans (great crowd pleasers) along the Drop Dead Red border. Francois Villon asked "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" Well, others pine for verdure and the lolling luxury of summer.</p> </dt> South African Succulents in autumn glory</dd> </dl> All summer long the containers throughout the gardens did their duty. I particularly admire the wonderful succulent containers in the South African plaza: but a single flower of Pelargonium just off center, but such richness of color and texture in stems and chubby leaves. No doubt these are tucked away safely in a glasshouse, waiting to come out again next spring. But it takes the intense summer sun and brash winds to bring out these colors in the out of doors. I love how in this picture we have the intricate vignette of container in the foreground, but a vista of intriguing mystery beyond. This interplay of vista and vignette is really the secret to the magic of Denver Botanic Gardens! In my opinion, nobody does it better than our talented horticulturists! We can all get all excited about winter bark, branches and berries, but it's fun to take a longing, lingering look back at a really awesome growing season! And now let's dream about the one to come!</p>
This week Denver Botanic Gardens hosted around 110 botanic gardens professionals from around the country as well as from England and Canada. Hosting the American Public Gardens Association’s (APGA) Plant Collections Symposium, all the attendees took away best management practices in collections care and priorities, ex situ</em> conservation and seed banking, plant labeling and databasing, and role of botanic gardens in climate change. The Gardens’ Horticulture and Research staff provided their expertise on these relevant topics through formal sessions and hands-on activities. Attendees included horticulturists, collections curators, plant recorders, research staff and directors. It was a great pleasure to host our colleagues from other institutions and to share ideas. Thanks APGA for selecting Denver Botanic Gardens as the venue for this amazing symposium! </p>
</p> What an amazing autumn! We almost always have had a dusting of snow by now, or light frost. But this fiery summer blazes on, especially in the many spectacular scarlet, crimson and fiery flowers around the Gardens. You can undoubtedly tell where I took the first picture (in front of the conservatory). I know, I know, many botanists have flocked to lump Zauschneria</em> into Epilobium</em>... and they undoubtedly have ample justification. But I figure, if hummingbirds can tell the difference, so can I! This giant burning bush from Arizona is one of the toughest xeriscape perennials and has been sold in Denver for decades, but you rarely see it. Of course, many years it gets frosted just before it reaches maximum conflagration, but not this year! Better mosey on down and check it out (bring your sunglasses to protect your eyes!).</p> </dt> Haemanthus multiflorus</dd> </dl> This little honey is South African, and no...Mike Kintgen does not believe it is hardy (he lifts the bulbs before hard frost): but what a spectacle this magnificent Amaryllid makes in the South African Plaza! I have seen Brunsvigia </em>and Haemanthus</em> in South Africa, where they can color the landscape for miles. Won't it be just peachy if we can eventually find some hardy ones to grow permanently outdoors? It's hard to believe this gem of a Salvia has proven so hardy in recent years: I have seen it thriving in many gardens. Even as an annual, it makes a spectacle worth the effort. Highly localized in northern Mexico in Nuevo Leon, this brings some Latin fire to the Darlene Radichel Plant Select garden...hurry on down and check it out (ten thousand hummingbirds can't be wrong!)... And finally, a picture I took last week at the Gardens at Kendrick Lake of a fine form of "California fuchsia" blazing there... One of these days the frost will come and extinguish all these flowers for the season: but not yet! Hurry on down and warm your eyes with the last best blazing colors of the season. When your hot, you're hot, and let me tell you Denver Botanic Gardens is still ablaze with color!</p>
</p> I realize it's a tad hard to convince our colleagues that we were hard at work when they see a picture of Mike Bone on a trusty steed, but believe me, riding that horse on the Djabagly Nature Reserve in Southern Kazakhstan turned out to be a good deal more exciting than we bargained on. It's been two weeks since Mike and I returned from an extraordinary 3 weeks traveling over much of Southern and far Eastern Kazakhstan. Those of you whose knowledge of that amazing country comes from Borat would be startled by the reality: the ninth largest country on earth (the size of half of Europe) is bustling, practically exploding economically and although the Kazakh are largely Islamic, women in Kazakhstan appear to be fully empowered. Young women in fashionable Western clothing could be seen strolling boldly through villages and towns day and night, grannies with grandkids can be found hitchiking and vodka and hard liquor was ubiquitous at restaurants and openly sipped by all and sundry. Fundamentalism has yet to cast its puritanical veil over this robust nation.</p> </dt> Great Fritillary on Azure Teasel (Dipsacus azureus)</dd> </dl> Politics were not the reason we came to Kazakhstan this year. Last year Plant Select sent the two of us to reconnoiter the Altai and Tien Shan, and we returned with enough tales and pictures to inspire a collecting trip this year. August and September turned out to be the perfect season for the widest spectrum of germplasm and we were surprised to find many plants still in bloom. This dazzling teasel (which did not seem to have the weedy proclivities of its invasive congeners) was one of many highlights of the trip. It may take many years to fully assess this and other collections to be sure they will not grow out of bounds in gardens, and that they do possess what it takes to be Plant Select worthy! This amazing plant was always sporting one or more butterflies, often this largest of Fritillaries. I suspect it will be attractive to American butterflies as well!</p> </dt> Campanula kapusii</dd> </dl> As a lover of rock gardens, finding little treasures that cling to rocks is always a highlight of a hike. This unusual campanula grew at almost 11,000' on limestone cliffs on the Upepr Kaindy pass in Djabagly, a spot of enormous biodiversity. Where to begin to describe the variety of plants and the majesty of soaring peaks and feathered steppe full of unusual bulbs and the quiddity of a country so much like Colorado, and yet twelve time zones away in either direction!</p> </dt> Allium fedtchenkoanum</dd> </dl> Kazakhstan may be the very center of the genus Allium</em>: we often found four or five species growing in the same vicinity, and many dozens of species over the course of our trip. Onions come in all shapes, sizes and habits: this alpine cousin to Chives is quite tasty, although it is such a truly lovely shade of golden yellow that I would much prefer to grow than eat it, wouldn't you? We are deeply grateful to Plant Select and the Gardens for making this trip possible. But without the guidance of our Kazakhstan guides, botanists and hosts across that great country we could never have seen literally thousands of kinds of plants in all manner of habitats in those almost mythical mountains: the Karatau, the Tien Shan and the Altai.</p>
Who isn't entranced by hummingbirds? This picture was taken and e-mailed to me recently by a visiting nurseryman, Erbin Baumgardner, last month in our new Darlene Radichel Plant Select Garden. You can still find hummingbirds buzzing the various Salvias and Agastaches in this garden almost any day of the week...and I've been thinking. I remember that one would see hummingbirds fleetingly in spring as they migrated to the mountains and again in fall when they migrate again to warmer climes. But during the great drought years of 1999-2003 one began to see hummingbirds midsummer when the diminished flowers in the parched hills gave out. Clever hummers realized that there was nectar to be found in the Front Range cities, mostly in plants recently introduced to horticulture by Plant Select. An interesting and unintended consequence of this program has been to provide a smorgasbord of plants terribly attractive to hummingbirds: red birds in a tree (Scrophularia macrantha</em>), almost all the Plant Select Salvias (Salvia darcyi</em> in particular, but also S. greggii</em> 'Furman's Red' and 'Wild Thing'), Zauschneria garrettii</em> 'Orange Carpet' and especially the tremendous palette of southwestern Agastache (aurantiaca, cana, rupestris</em> and multifarious hybrids) which were first introduced and promulgated by this program. These have all not just transformed our xeriscapes with their brilliant reds and oranges, they have provided a steady and reliable food source on the Plains for several of our most entrancing native bird species. Is that cool or what? I recommend planting both Salvias and Agastaches in the spring, but many more floral gems will be available at our annual </strong>Fall Plant and Bulb Sale</strong> this Saturday, Sept. 25 at our York Street site</strong>. [The sale will be located on our upper parking deck between Josephine and York. Admission is free. Member-only shopping is 8-9 a.m., open to the public from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.] Be there or be square!</p>
