Living Tree People
Fun stuff!
My tree dahlias have buds!
A few years ago, a friend in San Francisco mentioned he had pruned a “10 foot tall tree dahlia.” I shot back in a know-it-all tone, “There’s no such thing as a tree dahlia. That’s insane. It must be some other genus that has dahlia-like flowers.” One tends to become a skeptic after learning the hard way as a budding gardener that there’s no such thing as an “air fern” or a “tree tomato”. A quick flip of the Western Garden Book and I was eating tree dahlia crow. A tree dahlia really is a dahlia. Dahlia imperialis. It can grow to a whopping 12 feet. Who knew? Not even this someone who aced several plant i.d. classes in college.
Two years ago, I saw… and touched… and photographed… my first tree dahlias in Mendocino, CA. On a coolness scale of 1 to 10, tree dahlias are a 10. I had to have one.
Last December I put out a query on GardenWeb re: tree dahlia sources and on whether or not anyone grew them in hot-summer, cool-winter Sacramento. Towering tree dahlias, with their striking pink (or white) blooms, are not common in the Sacramento area. In fact, I’ve never seen them for sale at a local nursery and I’ve never seen one growing and about to bloom in a local garden. Until now. In my garden!
A generous gardener from Calistoga offered to swap with me. He got starts of my ‘Tropicanna’ Canna and I got hefty stem cuttings of pink Dahlia imperialis. I was encouraged by the fact that Calistoga gets nearly as hot in the summer as it does here and if this man’s tree dahlias thrived despite summer heat, then they stood a chance in my garden. I found a sheltered spot in the yard where they’d get sun most of the day but would be spared in the late afternoon. Because they were up against the house on the south side, they’d also be protected from strong north winds.
A previous attempt to grow tree dahlias from cuttings shortly before my GardenWeb exchange was a failure. A dear friend and fellow plant addict with the most kick-ass garden on the planet gave me a couple cuttings from her brother via a friend in San Francisco. For some reason, I decided to start my cuttings in my greenhouse, in sand. Not successful. My friend planted her starts in containers using regular potting soil and her tree dahlias are now in their second season and are neck-achingly tall, but with no flowers yet. All I can guess about why hers haven’t bloomed yet is that the cuttings she started with were small compared to the whoppers I got from Calistoga. Or… is it divine justice for all the flowers blooming in her yard that aren’t in mine?
Nah… probably just
Bigger stalk cut closer to the base = more nodes rarin’ to grow
When I saw buds on my plants, I figured it’d be a good idea to apply some Fox Farm Tiger Bloom
Stem cuttings of tree dahlia resemble bamboo. I was instructed to plant them horizontally in containers. Shoots arise vertically from horizontal nodes on the stems. My plants are still in 5-gallon containers but when it’s time to cut them back in December, I intend to plant the potted tubers in the ground and will stick a few new cuttings in pots in case my soil proves to be too heavy for good in-ground growth.
I hope to be able to share cuttings with friends and family who haven’t yet been invited to join the church of the tree dahlia. I always find myself saying, “This plant is so cool. You have to grow this.” Plant evangelist, yep, that’s me.
If you want to try growing tree dahlias in northern California or beyond, check your local nursery; Kudos to any nursery carrying collector plants like this. You might also try your local dahlia society, and I certainly recommend online plant swapping through GardenWeb’s Plant Exchange or Dave’s Garden! Annie’s Annuals sells the double white form and the pink form, by the way. In fact, tree dahlias might not be considered such a big deal in the bay area and other parts of the coast. Still… a dahlia… up to 12 feet tall? Dang!
Just came across the following link while doing a search for photos of the stalks. It’s an ebay dealer in San Francisco that sells all kinds of strange wonderful things, including Dahlia imperialis. Hey, guess what the business name is? StrangeWonderfulThings.com. They have a great photo of the base of a mature tree dahlia plant. Also, they say a tree dahlia can reach twenty feet! OMG.
Ok, here’s the official Sunset Western Garden Book entry on D. imperialis–
D. imperialis. TREE DAHLIA. Zones 4-6, 8, 9, 14-24. Multistemmed tree grows each year from permanent roots to a possible 10-20 ft. tall, 4-6 ft. wide. Daisylike, 4-8-in.-wide lavender flowers with yellow centers bloom at branch ends in late fall. Leaves divided into many leaflets. Frost kills tops completely; cut back to ground afterward. If tree dahlia were longer blooming or evergreen, it would be a valued landscape plant, but anual dieback relegates it to tall novelty class. Available from specialists; seldom sold in nurseries. Grow from cuttings taken near stem tops (or from side shoots) in fall; root in containers of moist sand kept in a protected place over winter. Or dig root clump and divide in fall. Give full sun or partial shade. D. excelsa, D. maxonii are similar.
Book recommendation: Nature Noir: A Park Ranger’s Patrol in the Sierra
What? Angela doesn’t only read gardening books? Ooh, she’s so multi-dimensional.
Nature Noir is a great read, folks, and is northern California and nature-related so I can justify recommending it on my Northern California nature lovin’ garden blog. This book will make you want to hug a park ranger.
This particular park ranger, Jordan Fisher Smith, writes with a lyricism and level of compassion I don’t think many of us could muster after spending years guarding a river facing damnation, finding tree-studded hills dotted not only with native wildflowers but with modern-day armed outlaws, and having pastoral moments snatched away by bureaucracy and the random call of the dispatcher.
To be a park ranger: Must enjoy life and death, guns and flowers, boredom and terror, paperwork and budget cuts, beauty and ugliness, rafting and hiking, solitude and brotherhood.
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NPR Interview with Jordan Fisher Smith
A garden panorama and time-lapse flower clips from still images
Photo by Mike Posehn
Garden bloggers, check out this super-cool interactive panorama shot of a garden in Loomis, CA. It’s called Loomis Labyrinth. Mike Posehn of Granite Bay Software made the photograph. His website, Dog’s Leap, offers panorama prints. Mike’s panorama images are also part of U.C. Berkeley’s Worldwide Panorama Project.
Granite Bay Software also sells a program called GBTimelapse for creating time-lapse video clips from still images and it’s compatible with most Canon PowerShot and EOS digital cameras. Mike’s timelapse clips can be purchased here.
You can even download the GB Timelapse free trial before buying the software for $49. Imagine the flower and garden applications for this software— showing flowers bursting into bloom, showing how sunrise and sunset wash over your garden. You might even be able to show your garden going from unpruned to pruned! Click here to see if the software works with your Canon camera. Mike even tells you how you can sell your own timelapse clips through TimeLapse Digital.
Halloween ideas from Sunset
(Photo by Rob D. Brodman, Sunset Magazine)
Little Field of Flowers Rug by NANIMARQUINA
Were you just thinking, “I love flowers soooooooooooo much that I wish I could buy a flower rug… and not just a flower-imprinted flat rug but a super-cool 3D-ish shaggy flower rug I can lie on contemplatively in my flouncy matching dress and pumps.”?
Yes? Me too! OMG, what are the odds? Well, our wish has been granted.
In Sacramento, you can buy this rug through Room & Company. Bay areans, try Design Within Reach in Berkeley or In Your Element in San Francisco.
Thanks to Inhabitat for blogging this. Now if only IKEA would manufacture a knockoff we mere mortals could afford…
Angela’s Stock Photography
