Strength in numbers

Begonia grandis seedlings, early January

This blog post was inspired by plant breeder Joseph Tychonievich, writing for The Garden Professors blog a few weeks ago.  In "Blast from my petunia past", Joseph showed the wide range of seedlings he got in the F2 generations of two different interspecific crosses he had made in the genus Petunia.  In reply to my comment about the importance of growing out large numbers of seedlings he said, "I totally agree — I selected the 9 flowers in each image as the most extreme forms from populations of several hundred seedlings. If you just grew a couple dozen seedling from each of these crosses you’d miss out on a lot of cool things. Breeding is, a lot of the time, a numbers game. The more you can grow, the more cool things you’ll find."

Report from the apocalypse

Jeanne d'Arc awaits the snow on Friday afternoon, Meridian Hill Park

After days of dire warnings, the snow finally began to fall yesterday afternoon.  A day later, the winter storm dubbed "Snowzilla" by my favorite local weather forecasters, the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang (I refuse to use the Weather Channel's "Jonas") has unfolded about as predicted.  This morning I measured between 16 and 18 inches of snow.  By Buffalo standards (where I grew up) that's not so bad, but for a city like Washington, DC it's a disaster.  Ironically, I was supposed to be flying to Buffalo today to visit with my family; needless to say all airports are closed and all flights are cancelled.  And we're not done yet; it's supposed to snow some more later today and into tonight so we may well get the two feet or more they've been warning.  I don't have much more to say so here's my video report (you'll need to click on the image to go to the video in Flickr):

For comparison, here's the same view of my garden as of November; last year wasn't my garden's best, but it looked a whole lot better than right now!

What's in a name?

What's the botanical name of this tassel fern?

While preparing a blog post about the United States Botanic Garden, I had a bit of a quandary with an interesting plant I photographed there.  The plant is sometime known as "tassel fern", but I had forgotten to note its botanical name so I posted it on my Facebook page and shared it with a few fern groups to get the proper identification.  What I got back were 3 different names: Lycopodium squarrosum, Huperzia squarrosa, and Phlegmariurus squarrosus.  Which one is right?

Winter doldrums

Edgeworthia chrysantha, blooming in January

I've been taking a break from blogging, originally because of the usual holiday craziness, but then because I just can't seem to motivate myself to write or even think about gardening.  The days are far too short, and the garden far too brown.  The last two winters wiped out much of my garden, and I'm just not looking forward to another one.  I shouldn't complain because after our two coldest winters in 20 years, we're now experiencing one of our warmest.  Although we had a few light frosts in November and December, DC didn't experience its first hard freeze until early January and we've only recently seen a few scarce flakes of snow.  Daffodils and crocuses are popping up all over my garden, and the silver-haired buds on Edgeworthia chrysantha (above), which normally blooms sometime in March, are swelling and opening.  (I should note that I took the photos in this blog post with my new 6s iPhone; the photos may not be publication quality, but I'm pretty impressed with its camera function.)


Edgeworthia chrysantha in a friend's garden, showing the silver-haired clusters of buds

On the bright side (quite literally), days are getting longer and spring doesn't seem quite as far off.  Indoors, seedlings are beginning to demand my attention.  I made several begonias crosses last year, including a couple that I think are going to produce some very cool (and almost certainly hardy) hybrids.  I spent today sowing the last few batches of seeds, and potting up some of the seedlings that have already gotten too crowded in their pots.  Some of them are already hinting at the colors and patterns I can expect from them.  Once the seedlings have their second set of true leaves they really take off, so I guess it's time to get off my butt, stop feeling sorry for myself, and get back to gardening.


Begonia seedlings