Plants I'm Growing--First Blooms: White Cistus, Trillium, and Dianthus (April 23, 2010)

First blooms of 2010 today on three plants--the big white Cistus (rock rose) under the pink crabapple (above), the Trillium at the back of the house (below), and the low Dianthus by the driveway.

I don't have records for 2009 for either the Cistus or the Dianthus, but the Trillium bloomed last year on April 21, so a year according to the Trillium was 367 days. The photo here is from last year. The leaves this year are rather bruised because of the sustained hail we had a couple of days ago.

Plants I'm growing: First Blooms--Columbine, Trillium

Other flowers just coming into bloom yesterday included the yellow columbines and the Trillium at the back side of the house, as well as the Peruvian verbena at the front. The Columbine is a very large, long-purred variety that freely crosses with the native columbine I grow (Aquilegia formosa). The crosses are very pretty, but don't come true from seed, of course. Wish I could propagate them. 

The Trillium, another of those woodland wildflowers that remind me of Ohio, do very well in the rather different climate here. I need to figure out what species this is. Clearly not one of those that lives happily in the much wetter East.

Plants I'm growing: First Blooms--Roses and Phlomis Lanata

The Phlomis lanata in the garden started blooming today (pictured) as did the "New Dawn" climbing rose on the back fence (pictured) and the rose "Cocktail." Nearly all the roses are going strongly now. I'm not especially a rose fan, but the old-fashioned single-petaled ones remind me of the wild roses I saw as a child in England, in Somerset (Taunton). I like these very much. "New Dawn" is an old-fashioned climber with quintessentially rose-like buds--chaste almost.