Robin: Plant Behavior in North Bend, Washington

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Robin: Plant Behavior in North Bend, Washington

Birdie Padavich

March, 1980:

We are having a repeat of winter this morning. The ground is covered with snow and the temperature is down to 30 degrees. Guess I bragged too early about my 'Blue Bedder' Penstemon. The winter took its toll and I can only see green stems on one plant; the rest are gone. P. newberryi has some brown stems but looks good.

I would really like to know why a healthy looking Penstemon plant starts to die. It seems to be only the "shrubbies" that have that bad habit. One day you notice a small branch turning brown and the stem looks dry. You remove the branch and in a few days another stem will look brown. This keeps up until the entire plant dies. This happened to a large plant of a small-leafed P. menziesii [now P. davidsonii var. menziesii ed.] last fall. Sometimes I wonder if a cat has wet on it as it wanders around the garden.

I have a few Penstemons from last summer's collecting that I hope bloom for me. I find very few Penstemon in the desert mountains. If there is a spring close by, you will find Penstemon. Often if the mountain is high enough, there is sufficient moisture at the base of rock-cliffs for ferns and some type of plant growth. Last year was a wet year on the desert and ferns grew everywhere. This year I found only two; one in Joshua Tree National Monument where early settlers, had dammed a spring and made a small lake for irrigation. We hiked in there one day while staying in the park. Wherever there was a bit of soil resting in the rock crevices, plants flourished: Penstemon and Zausahneria and a lovely little grass with large heads.

The Zauschneria has me puzzled. It had the right bloom but the foliage and seed pods were not right. The foliage was small and crinkled and seed pods looked like Epilobium. The Penstemon plant was about 8" high. Large gray leaves crowded on the stems. There was no bloom but a few seed pods were seen. The rest of the pods had opened and were empty. Later I asked the ranger if he knew what they were, and he did not even know what a Penstemon was.

Frank and Faith Mackaness from Corbitt, Oregon, were in the trailer park.

(June, 1980}

Our weather has turned cold with new snow in all the mountains around tonight. We have had hail the last two weeks which has ruined the iris as well as Penstemon bloom. Had some lovely reds on newberryi from Mt. Lassen in California. I must take some cuttings just in case we have fallout here. I had one old Penstemon bloom last week which had very strap leaves, very narrow, with tiny long deep purple bloom. The flowers were so deep purple, you had to look close to see them. I checked tonight and found that it has turned brown and looks dead. It just could not stand the cold and rain, I guess.

I lost my old plants of rupicola alba but found a couple of cuttings growing.

(July, 1980)

I have seen some wonderful plantings of wild Penstemons this spring and summer. I believe P. fruticosus, when it crosses with P. rupicola, throws so many different color forms. I believe it is one of the best Penstemons. You find it in one-foot tall plants to three or four-inch plants. In one planting this summer, I found blue, magenta, bright blue, deep purple with almost black buds, and light purple. I picked a few sprigs of each and when gathered together, you can appreciate the color range. I cannot believe it dies off in branches as the P. menziesi group. I have had a lot of die-off this spring.

We had a wonderful trip on the fourth of July across the Table Mountains to Wenatchee. The Lupine and Penstemon fruticosus made the mountain sides one big splash of color. P. confertus Kittitas was in bloom on the rim. It is a deep yellow flower, not too large and with good dark foliage. P. diffusus in different shades of blue-purple was growing on all the road banks. There are not too many whites in the Penstemon family, but I will try to get seed of the P. fruticosus alba X rupicola for the seed exchange.

(August, 1980)

I have had trouble with my evergreen Penstemon this year. I will have a lovely mat, then one branch will turn yellow followed by another until almost the whole plant is gone. Branch by branch one should clean out all of the yellow branches, saving a small piece which will then grow like mad, giving you a nice plant once again. I wish I knew what caused the trouble. Perhaps it is too rich a soil.

This July when I was taking cutting material of Penstemon, I was hanging on a rocky cliff and was only able to take the stems from the main trunk of the plant. Taking cuttings from the stem when I reached home, I stuck the rest of the stems in a glass of water in the greenhouse. After the flowers had gone, I picked up the glass and was going to throw it out when I noticed roots all along the stem. I planted them out in flats and now have nice-sized plants. There were P. fruticosus and rupicola hybrids in deep rich purple-red. I am not sure that the other shrubbies will do this.

Going over Blewett Pass last week, I saw P. richardsonii in lovely shades of pink. I thought this strain of P. richardsonii was gone. Some 30 years ago that was the only color you could find on Blewett Pass. As the years have gone by, it disappeared from the Pass altogether. I am glad to see it again and will try for seed later this month.