Most of the plants sold in garden nurseries here in our fair city, are not truly desert plants at all. They tend to be Mediterranean or tropical plants. A Mediterranean plant is one that is adapted to a climate where the winters tend to be mild and wet and the summers suffer under drought conditions. Our climate is well suited to these plants.
Tropical plants are those that require more water than Mediterraneans and they don't tolerate the direct sunlight as well. At least our direct summer sun.
This is Lantana, a more tropical plant, but still a favorite among homeowners and landscapers here.
Bougainvillea is another plant that does well here. It is native to South America, but acts like a Mediterranean plant. It thrives in sun, with low watering.
The problem with these plants is that they cannot tolerate our winter cold that well. They typically freeze way back in winter, sometimes to the ground, leaving the exposed foliage dead and unsightly. Bougainvillea also has enormous thorns that make Spring pruning a challenge.
It has been my experience that allowing a large Bougainvillea to freeze, makes pruning in the Spring an undertaking from hell, roughly equivalent to trying to do dental work on a crocodile without sedation.
This is a still tender Bougainvillea branch. You can see the developing thorns adjacent to the leaf petiole. I guess that these thorns are an evolutionary response to grazing animals.
These are two sections of Bougainvillea cane that froze last year. Once the branch becomes woody, the thorns are a killer. I have had them go right through the bottoms of my shoes and into my feet when I have accidentally stepped on one. Like most things, Bougainvillea is worth the trouble because of its beauty.
Lantana typically freezes right to the ground and although it has no thorns, it still leaves a dead woody mess to clean up in Spring.
In addition, the Lovely Mrs. Sneed doesn't care for the unsightliness that freezing brings to these plants. Long-time Sneed readers know that item one on the Sneed Blog's mission statement is to keep the lovely Mrs. S. happy, or at least not mad at me.
We usually make a preemptive strike on these plants in fall. By we, I mean her usually, although I am always the put it in the truck and take it to the dump guy.
Since she is working two jobs and I have zero jobs, I figured that it was only fair for me to cut the monsters back myself this year.
So, this morning, without regard to my personal safety, I cut back all of the Lantana and Bougainvillea, loaded them into the truck and took them to the City composting area at our municipal dump. Braving 30 to 40 mph winds in the process, I might add.
Note to local weather people. Your forecast of diminishing winds was slightly off. The good news is that you can just make the same forecast for tomorrow.
Here's a tip for life from me. When unloading thorny stuff at the dump, park downwind from the other dumpees, or is it dumpers?. That way, any cussing that might occur, will be carried away from sensitive ears. You're welcome.
This morning, as I unloaded the razor-sharp mess from my truck in heavy winds, (did I mention that?) I had a vision of a woman a mile downwind, suddenly turning to her husband and saying, "Eldon, did you just call me a motherf*cker?"
A lot of your smart gardening guys say not to cut back these plants until they die back in winter and begin to re-leaf in Spring. The thinking is that the pruning will cause the plant to start to sprout before the truly cold weather comes and damage the plant. I figure it doesn't matter since the plant is going to freeze back anyway.
On a scale of 1 to 10, doing it now is about a 7. Doing it in March is definitely a ten.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
2 comments:
That Lantana grows wild in Florida. My babysitter used to tell me it was poisonous, but I don't know if that's really true or not. Maybe only to cattle! (She grew up on a farm.)
We have a something plant that the neighbor advised me to cut back to a nub in the early spring. It still grew into an enormous whatever it is.
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