Bog Plants at the NC Botanical Garden

When we visited the NC Botanical Garden in June the bog garden was in full bloom.

There was lots of Plymouth Rose-Gentian, whose fragrance is as exquisite as its beauty.

And lots of Pitcher Plants. Pitcher Plants live in bogs that are very low in
nitrogen, and they have evolved to digest insects as their nitrogen source.

They have unusual-looking rounded flowers, and the plants themselves
come in so many different colors and patterns because they hybridize freely.

Insects lured by the promise of nectar find that they cannot crawl back
out and eventually fall into a liquid-filled cavity at the base of the plant.

These Common Grass Pink Orchids are exquisite too.

The Sundews are elegant in a surprising sort of way, and even have
beautiful little pink flowers covered in fuzzy down that are in bud
in the picture. Like the Pitcher Plants Sundews are carnivorous.

Whereas the Pitcher Plants utilize a "pitfall trap" to catch their prey, the fine sticky hairs on the stems of this Tracy's Sundew attract insects and then capture them, even physically curling around their prey, although at much slower speeds than a Venus Flytrap.

Venus Flytraps are native only to an area within a 100 mile radius of Wilmington, NC. Historically Pitcher Plants had a much wider range than that of Venus Flytraps, with the range of the Purple Pitcher Plant extending even to the mountains.

An artist's representation of some of what Pitcher Plants and Sundew Plants enjoy eating.

Looking for more vitamin C?

Those Orange Milkworts do look yummy.

Last but not least, Few-Flowered Milkweed. Besides liking wet
conditions, this is a much taller and more airy plant than Butterfly Weed.

The display almost makes you want to build raised peat beds and water them 3 times a day doesn't it? Perhaps a nice-sized pot or tub would be doable..

Plants in space

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) grows wild on the farm in at least 2 wet half-shaded spots. I never thought about it much before until I saw a buttonbush last month in bloom at the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. It was limbed up as a small tree and looked charming and unusual covered with round balls of flowers. The flowers were covered with bees.

(Sorry but I could not get a good picture of the entire tree; the blazing sun was right behind it.)

The little tree was as busy as a bee hive.

The flowers do have a faint sweet fragrance. I had read that they smell like
honey and it's true ~ I just checked our bottle of honey to be sure ;)

The flowers and buds remind me of a sun being orbited by planets, or a planet by its moons.

Or one could say the flowers resemble Spaceship Earth at the Epcot Center

picture from Wikipedia

although I think they look more like the cake version
(made by Jen and John, authors of the famous blog
Cake Wrecks) than the real thing.

picture from Cake Wrecks

Not only are these flowers remind me of outer space, they remind me of inner space too, specifically models of atoms. Anyway, now that I've seen what a limbed-up Buttonbush that gets enough sun looks like, I have to get one. It makes for an unique and in its own way beautiful specimen and the bees love it. I will have to see if ours are still flowering ~ they may have been overtaken by shade by now ~ and take cuttings this month. If that fails I know that the NC Botanical Garden has offered the seeds in the past, and that Niche Gardens sells it.

I am glad that the Botanical Garden brought this native into my orbit and allowed me to see it in a different light than I had before.

Fourth of July Barbeque

This past weekend felt as though we were on the bbq. The heat like being on blazing hot coals during the day, then thick smoke Saturday night. I don't know if the smoke was from the fire in Bladen County or is something more local. Just to err on the side of caution I walked down to the pastures at 11 pm to make sure our woods weren't on fire. Thankfully on Sunday morning the wind came up and the smoke dissipated.

The peppermint spray is deterring the deer so far. The culprits were the doe and yearlings twins that have been living here for over a year; my guess is that the doe lost this year's fawn and rejoined her youngsters from last year. The yearling buck looks so grown up already; he's much bigger than his mom and sister and has a sizeable rack of antlers. His mother is still the boss, however. She will nip him if he gets in her way.

I never thought I'd be such a daylily fan, but each one has their own individual loveliness. And unlike orange ditch lilies, most have the good grace not to have very much foliage.

'Beautiful Edgings'

'Hudson Valley' has huge fragrant flowers.

'Lavender Stardust'

Unknown, obtained in a trade

'Ada May Musick'

'Jedi Blue Note'

Noid I got in a trade. It's grown on me.

'Hyperion'

'Pandora's Box'

I absolutely love this daylily.

When I pulled the tag I got this:

Typical, but I'm surprised there was a tag at all, since I wanted to know what it
was. There were enough letters that a Google search turned up the name right away.

'Trahlyta'

A picture from later in the day, showing some changes in color and just as lovely
as it was in the morning. I like the combination of moody plum and vivid purple.

'Easy Ned'

'Shady Lady'

'Lavender Deal'

A beautiful fragrant daylily from Wayside. The tag was lost long ago.

Those water droplets are from the hose, not from rain. I hope we get some rain this week. All of the little bumblebees working so hard in the garden are drinking from the puddle next to the water trough. They land on the surface of the water with legs outstretched like a water bug, drink, and then fly off again. Much of the day there are half a dozen bees quenching their thirst at any given time. There's even a couple of water frogs living in the puddle too.