Houstonia caerulea - photographic essay

[Maggi Young]

My, not only is it greening up, it has even managed to open some flowers already.... nice work, eh?

[TheOnionMan]

My, not only is it greening up, it has even managed to open some flowers already.... nice work, eh?

They are weeds here, although in their best forms, choice weeds indeed.   

[TheOnionMan]

Scanning through my digital photo library, I came upon two more photos of Houstonia caerulea in a rock garden setting, taken in a friend's garden, one is white and the other is light blue.

[Lesley Cox]

Yes, those are very nice indeed. My white is just like that white but my blue - now deceased - was a wide, loose scrambling mat that tried to smother Rhodo keleticum before its own demise.

[TheOnionMan]

The abnormally hot weather and string of sunny days pushed things along faster than usual, and suddenly the Houstonia caerulea plants are starting into their main flush of flowering.

Maggi, it is interesting that the winter-green bun turns out to be bluest form, whereas the winter red-leaf bun turns out to be white ever so slightly tinged blue.  The bluest one also has flowers 2-3 times larger than the others.

[alpines]

Mark,
Are these growing in your yard? You are obviously an 'enthusiast' where bluets are concerned. There is a yard about 6 miles from us that is awash with them. They are obviously native as opposed to garden plants and in full sun. They are predominantly white. The one plant I photographed (See my Kentucky posting) was in the deepest shade and is an intense blue. Having gone back and looked through my shots, other plants in the near vicinity were also white. Strange !

[TheOnionMan]

Mark,
Are these growing in your yard? You are obviously an 'enthusiast' where bluets are concerned. There is a yard about 6 miles from us that is awash with them. They are obviously native as opposed to garden plants and in full sun. They are predominantly white. The one plant I photographed (See my Kentucky posting) was in the deepest shade and is an intense blue. Having gone back and looked through my shots, other plants in the near vicinity were also white. Strange !

Alan, the original photo essay that I started this thread with shows a remarkably variable colony a mere 1-1/2 miles from my house in northern Massachusetts.  In fact, I'm signed up to do the same 10K road race shortly (in a couple weeks), so I shall check out what this colony is doing again this year, as the opportunity presents itself.  The photos shown more recently in the thread, are indeed plants growing in my garden, from "snippets" taken at the subject colony.  Years ago when I visited the garden of Geoffrey Charlesworth and Norman Singer in South Sandisfield, Massachusetts, near the Connecticut and New York border, their native bluets were deep blue indeed, growing in full sun.  Wish I had some like that, although I'm pleased with these new willing-to-grow newbies.

[TheOnionMan]

This shot taken specifically to show the degree of slope these are planted on.  I'm delighted, they have seeded around from last year's planting, and lots of babies coming up... they'll flower no matter how tiny a young plant they are.

[TheOnionMan]

Some more views as the plants are starting to "flower up a storm".  More and more single baby seedlings appear, each putting up a single sweet floret.  The eventually goal is to have bluets as an underplanting to my various Trillium species. 

An interesting phenomenon I have observed first hand, is the deepening of flower color, some that were basically white with the slightest hint of blue, have become decidedly blue.  Not sure if this is due to the weather, soil, or just a naturally occurring feature.

[TheOnionMan]

On then anniversary of my finding a terrific Houstonia caerulea patch, this past weekend I once again entered a 10k roadrace, followed by scouting around the grounds of a business that allowed runners to park and shuttle from.  I found a couple different patches of Houstonia, but in one wooded hollow just in front of the building, there were drifts of Anemone quinquefolia in flower, and the diminutive Panax trifolius.

1.   View of the deciduous wooded hollow and driveway passing around it.  Here Houstonis grew best at the fringes where they received more light, and were fiound as only small individual non-clumping plants in the shadier spots.

2.   Small and large patches of Anemone quinquefolia, very attractive but short-lived in bloom.

3.   Only a little bit of variation with A. quinquefolia, there were dark-leaf forms, but with normal white flowers.

4.   There were a few A. quinquefolia tinged pink on the back of the petals.  Flowers that go over, turn beige.

5.   A. quinquefolia, Panax trifolius, and Linnaea borealis

6.   View of woodland edge, with variable populations of Houstonia caerulea.

7-9 Variable forms of Houstonia caerulea

10.  Lots of bluets, can you spot the one 5-petalled flower.  The article that Kristl Walek posted about bluets found with 5 petals, had me looking to spot such individuals, but they are just aberrations on normal 4-petalled plants.

[TheOnionMan]

Maybe you're asking yourself "I wonder how McMark's Houstonia plants are doing now?"    I'll tell you, they exceed my expectations, after a full month of flowering, and getting bigger and more floriferous than I imagined they would, there appears to be no end of flowering in sight.

[TheOnionMan]

Maybe you're all wondering "what do McMarks bluets look like now at the height of summer".  Well, they flowered up a storm for months, but are mostly gone over now, with clouds of little spindly stems and tiny seed pods, sporadically popping out a flower or two.  At peak flowering the basal rosettes basically give way to innumerable flowering stems, with little resemblance to its former self.  But now, during and mostly after flowering, the compact basal rosettes are reforming and rebuilding.  Here's a recent photo, a couple arrows pointing to young seedling mounds.

I will trim one or two of these clumps, cutting off all the spent stems, to reveal what it's doing below.

[Lesley Cox]

Mine (my present white and my lost blue) never looked like that but I never had identifiable seed on either of them. But I received some seed in the post today, from Helen in Canada.