Testing the limits: 2015 winners

If you're going to "test the limits" you have to be willing to take a few losses.  That was the point of my previous blog post (see Testing the limits... and finding them: 2014-2015 losers) when I wrote about the plants I lost last winter, which along with 2013-2014 brought my area's two coldest winters in 20 years.  Each of those two winters, on its own, wasn't so unusual; we get winters like that every 10-15 years and we were several years overdue.  What was unusual was getting two such winters back to back.  That makes the survivors all the more special to me.  They don't necessarily look their best this year, but considering the minimal protection I gave them I'm more than happy.

Needle palms: big, bigger, biggest

Needle palm, January 2015

Something smells a bit funky in my garden this time of year.  The fruits of needle palms (Rhapidophyllum hystrix) ripen in late fall in dense clusters at the base of the plant and look--and smell--like some wild animal came along and pooped out a big pile of scat.  I suppose this must be attractive to some animal that disperses the seeds, but I don't think anybody has figured out for sure what animal that might be.  The flowers it produces in late spring are about as appealing, looking like some strange fungus attacking the plant.