Flowers – Lee Reich

WHAT GAVE SUSAN HER BLACK EYE?

July 29, 2026/0 Comments/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

It’s All Botanical

What gave Susan her black eye? Her central florets, that’s what. Black-eyed Susan flowers, blooming now and for the next few weeks, are actually made up of two kinds of florets, or small flowers. In the center of each flower are small, tubular flowers called disk florets. Those tubular petals are dark. Hence the black eye.

Black-eyed Susan disk flowers

Florets around the outside edge of the eye are called ray florets, and each one has one petal, large and orange-yellow. The petals point outward around the black eye, like a sunburst. The disk flowers and the ray flowers give black-eyed Susans the characteristic look of a daisy, “day’s eye,” which is the origin of the word. Read more

DINNERPLATE DAHLIAS, AND MORE

July 22, 2026/0 Comments/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

Flowers are the ephemerals of the garden. The plants vanish without a trace at the end of each season, so you would hardly think them worth pruning during their brief stay. Still, pruning can help make more flowers, as well as either make the plants bushier or increase the size of individual flowers. So grab your hand shears and sharpen your thumbnail and let’s go for a stroll among the flowers.

Dahlia, Kelvin Floodlight

A Single Pinch’ll Do It

Pinching out the tips of growing stems stops, at least temporarily, their growth, in so doing coaxing growth of side shoots. The result: bushier plants. Even though plants Read more

Ornamental front path vegetables and flowers together

PRETTY EDIBLES

June 17, 2026/2 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Don’t Pigeonhole Them

Look around your vegetable garden: Aren’t some of these plants pretty enough to be grown as ornamentals, perhaps shoulder to shoulder with marigolds, delphinium, and others in a flower garden or at the feet of shrubbery?

Imagine, if you will, a twining vine with sprays of scarlet flowers poking out from lime green foliage. The plant, scarlet runner bean, is so attractive that you might consider the edible pods as merely incidental — until you taste their rich, meaty flavor. Some other pole beans are also ornamental. Purple Peacock and Purple Pod Pole are Read more

THOSE OTHER PEONIES

May 21, 2026/0 Comments/in Flowers/by Lee Reich

I wouldn’t say that tree peonies — those “other peonies” — prepare you for the show of the herbaceous ones soon to come. No, with quivering golden stamens enveloped in dish-sized whorls of silky white, pink, red, lavender, or yellow petals, tree peony blossoms catapult you into peony-dom. Later, catch your breath with the herbaceous ones.

WITH GOOD REASON, FAMILIES MIGRATE AROUND MY GARDEN

March 3, 2026/4 Comments/in Flowers, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

(Excerpt from The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, available directly from this website, signed, or from the usual sources.)

Who is Coming?

How many families am I having over to the vegetable garden this summer? I have to plan their seating arrangements.

I’m talking about plant families. An example of a plant family is the Mustard Family, known botanically as the Cruciferae, and including among its members cabbage, broccoli, collards, and Brussels sprouts. Their similarly pungent flavors and waxy, bluish leaves might also have earmarked them as being in the same family. Then again, the different parts eaten—the swollen stalks of kohlrabi, the leaves of cabbage, and the flower buds of broccoli— might indicate otherwise.

Most important in uniting this family, and the primary characteristic that botanically unites members of any plant family, is Read more

Another relative, this one called Amorphophallus

AND THE REAL SPLIT-LEAF PHILODENDRON IS. . .

February 18, 2026/0 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

Doppelgangers

Ask for the real philodendron to stand up and you might be surprised at what plant does not rise. The still-seated plant I’m talking about is Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa), often called split-leaf philodendron.

Swiss cheese plant is sometimes called split-leaf philodendron, a common name it shares with a true philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum) because both have similar looking, large glossy, incised leaves and aerial roots. Like the real philodendron, Swiss cheese plant also has a hardy disposition within the limitation of being tropical, and tolerates low light, dry air, and neglectful watering as well as do other good houseplants.

Philodendron bipinnatifidum

Where the cousins part ways visually is in the “Swiss cheese” aspect of the plants. Read more

Grapefruit chimera, illustration from my book Fruit: From the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection

MYTHOLOGY COMES ALIVE!

February 4, 2026/2 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

[The following is excerpted from my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, available from the usual sources or, signed, directly from me at leereich.com/books.

Chimeras That Are Not Frightening

The chimera of Greek mythology was a scary, fire-breathing creature that was part lion, part goat, and part dragon, and feasted on humans. Although Bellerophon killed that chimera, some still exist today. Perhaps there’s one in your backyard, even in your house!

A chimera is a composite creature, a genetic mosaic, and such creatures exist in the plant world. Don’t expect to find red apples dangling from marigold stems or gardenia blooms unfolding against backdrops of poinsettia leaves. Plant chimeras never are as genetically diverse as that lion, goat, and dragon combo. Nor are they as physically diverse, a plant usually broadcasting that it is a chimera only with splotches or lines of color different from the surrounding color of the leaves, flowers, or fruits.

A chimera might originate by design, more usually by chance. Read more

JUMANGI!!!

January 14, 2026/4 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

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, 2025/13 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