Flowers – Lee Reich

JUMANGI!!!

January 14, 2026/0 Comments/in Flowers, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

The “True” Jimangi

Back in 1995, Robin Williams starred in a rather bizarre movie, Jumangi. The rhinoceroses charging through the living room and the crazed, great white hunter caused more terror than did the bizarre plant that kept threatening Robin Williams. After all, rhinoceroses and great white hunters, even crazy ones, are real enough, but that plant surely had to be no more than a moviemaker’s fantasy. Well, let me tell you, that odd looking plant bore an eerily strong resemblance to a real plant.

Jumanji

Macrocarpa, wintergreen planted as ornamental, Bryn Mawr

A WELCOME TOUCH OF GREENERY

January 7, 2026/2 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Beauty, Beer, and Aroma

What more hopeful way to go into winter than with a plant named wintergreen? Wintergreen. The word conjures up an image of lush greenery against lily white snow, a congenial juxtaposition of the living and the nonliving, both pristine.

Wild wintergreen in Maine

If the word wintergreen brings to mind, instead, a refreshing aroma or flavor — yes — that’s the same plant. Oil of wintergreen has been used as flavoring for teas and beers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, as well as straight up, as a leafy nibble. The plant’s berries also provide a nibble, one that might make you start moving your feet. Wintergreen is also known as teaberry, the flavoring in a chewing gum that was featured in popular TV advertisements in the late 1960s that showed the gum inducing a jiglike dance, the “teaberry shuffle,” to a catchy tune. Read more

THREE BEAUTIFUL QUINCES

November 3, 2025/10 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Two Hardly Edible Quinces

A lot people wonder about eating those orbs hanging from quince bushes. After all, everyone has heard of eating quinces, even if few people — these days, at least — have actually tried them.

In most cases, the answer to the question about whether you can eat the fruit depends on how hungry you are. The reason is because most of the “quinces” that you see are what are called “flowering quinces” (Chaenomeles spp.), grown mostly as ornamentals. Read more

RED LIKE I’D NEVER BEFORE SEEN

September 10, 2025/5 Comments/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

First Sightings

The first time I saw cardinal flowers, they were growing in a drainage ditch along a farm field in southern Delaware. Their intense, red color took my breath away, in part, because of their surroundings. After all, this was no well-tended, perennial flower border, where colorful flowers would be expected. No, growing along that ditch, those cardinal flowers were “mere” wildings.

What’s more, the plants were blooming in deep shade, a place usually lit, if then, by white flowers. Read more

TWO GOOD FLAVORS IN ONE

August 26, 2025/3 Comments/in Flowers, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Friend or Foe?

Is it a weed or is it a garden plant? Garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) is among those plants — paulownia tree, Jerusalem artichoke, mint, and anise hyssop are others — that has paraded under either guise.

Garlic chives comes from a good enough family, the onion family. There is one definitely weedy member to this family, wild garlic, but so many of its other kin are valuable garden plants. Star-of-Persia, Read more

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,” illustration from The National Nursery Book, ca. 1870

HOW DID HER GARDEN GROW?

August 12, 2025/2 Comments/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

What are Silver Bells?

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow; With silver bells and cockleshells, all standing . . .” Wait a second here! With what? Silver bells and cockleshells? Has anyone besides Contrary Mary ever grown either of these plants? What are they?

A few people do grow Carolina (Halesia carolina) or two-wing silverbells (Halesia diptera). Both small trees are bedecked in spring with rosy or white flowers that hang from the branches like little bells.

Halesia diptera

I doubt that Mary was growing this plant, though, because she was British and silverbells are native to southeastern US. Not impossible, though, since silverbell trees were introduced into the UK in 1756, about the same time that the nursery ditty was first seen in print. Read more

A ROCKET FOR YOUR GARDEN

May 29, 2025/1 Comment/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

And a Welcome Dame

There’s a rocket in my garden, and it’s not in the sky. The rocket? It’s dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis). Individual plants are ho-hum, but these plants like to congregate. Here on the farmden and beyond, dame’s rocket is now blanketing the dappled shade of woodlands and roadsides with its white, mauve, or purple flowers. In mass, they will bowl you over with their sweet scent, especially pervasive on late spring and early summer evenings.

WHAT’S DOING IN YOUR ‘HOOD

April 1, 2025/4 Comments/in Design, Flowers/by Lee Reich

Rhododendron Death?

I don’t know if this is happening in your neighborhood, but in my neighborhood a fungus is reported to be ravaging rhododendrons. Except that it’s not a fungus. Those browning, wilting leaves are caused by cold.

This past winter, temperatures did drop a few degrees below zero Fahrenheit, but that’s pretty much par for the course these days. In years past, winter temperatures here on the farmden regularly dipped down to near minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which was why I was always reluctant to plant rhododendrons.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

February 26, 2025/2 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Varieties and Aesthetics Past

You’re rummaging in the attic, in your greatgrandma’s steamer trunk, and you come upon a dusty, old packet of garden balsam seeds. An heirloom! This heirloom’s probably more valuable for the picture on the packet than for the seeds, which probably have lost their vitality. You could, though, if you wanted, get your hands on heirloom plants seeds or plants that would grow.

HEY BUD

January 15, 2025/8 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Budding Interest

Winter is a good time to look at some of the finer details of trees and shrubs — their buds, for example. Buds!? Bo-o-o-oring, you say? Not really, if you take the time to appreciate details such as their shapes, colors, and textures.

Plum buds about to pop

Buds can do more than just help you wile away winter hours. They can disclose a plant’s identity as well as foretell for you what what’s in the offing for the upcoming growing season as far as flowers and fruits. Read more