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I finished my consulting and seminar-leading trip to Kansas on Sunday, July 19, and then headed back to Denver to take a late-night flight to Portland. I thought that sometime I should visit the renowned Denver Botanical Garden, and an extra hour on Sunday provided me a brief window to visit the York St. garden. They are in the midst of major construction now, construction that served the useful purpose of giving me a plausible excuse, if caught, for why I sneaked into a side garden without paying ('you mean, sir, I needed to go around that fence there?'). As it was, I had about 30 precious minutes to survey a number of plants and trees that I will note here. I find the discipline and joy of "filling out" my knowledge of the world through plant/tree identification to be one of the most useful and enjoyable things I do. It has taught me more about discipline, perseverance, good teaching and learning, and enjoyment of life than almost any other activity I have engaged in. Here are a few things I discovered.

A Few Trees

I consider it a good day if I can learn the names of ten new species; sometimes you really can't fully learn more than five, but in this case I made a list of about 20 new ones. First, a few trees. I ran across the extremely rare Deam's Oak, named after "Good Ol' Charlie" Deam, a pharmacist, turned botanist from Bluffton IN, who was born mid-19th century but lived well into the 20th. Charlie discovered the oak bearing his name in his county in IN; the Denver garden is fortunate to have an exemplar. The leaves are "white oakish," and they look like Oregon oak leaves, yet straighter. Then, I was delighted to see a "pincushion Gleditsia" or honeylocust. I had heard of the pincushion flower, of course (named the Scabiosa because of its medicinal use to stop itching), but this was the first time I remember seeing this unusual tree. Of note are the concentrated clusters of leaves, bunched together in ways that are just so different from your typical Gleditsia. I didn't realize that the genus is named after a German botanist J. T. Gleditsch (1714-1786); the Europeans still spell the name of the genus with an "h"--Gleditschia. Then, there was a cutleaf mountain mahogany or desert mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) as well as a papaya tree. The leaves of the papaya tree look like a giant fatsia leaf. Here is a picture. It, like the fig tree, is a Carica; hence the basic similarity of leaf style. Finally, a Mexican pine tree, Pinus strobiformis, was in the garden just west of the York St. (false) entrance.

Some Plants and Flowers

I am constantly humbled by the new flowers and plants I discover. The grasses that interested me were the Lagurus oratus or "Bunny Tails." Picture is here. The grass is green and erect, with a buff-colored 2'' oblong flower head which is as soft as a bunny's tail. Hence the name. You can't soon forget these. By the way, if you have a slightly bunched head of a long, erect green grass, you have feather reed grass: an example is Foerster's feather reed grass. I will speak about seven or so other types of grass in a later essay; suffice it for now to say that I would be delighted to have either of these in my garden. Tussock grass, Deschampsia caespitosa, very popular in New Zealand, is here as well as at the Botanical Garden! But I have found other names for this grass, including Festuca novae-zelandiae and Poa labillardieri so I guess I still don't fully know this bunchy tall brown grass.

A few new flowers that appealed to me were the Bidens ferulifolia (why is it called Bidens?), popularly known as the the "Solaire Yellow." Here it is. You might tend to confuse this with the Cinquefoil (Potentilla) or even the St. John's Wort because of the five yellow petals, but here is where you have to learn to identify both the flower and the leaves/roots. I found the Bidens again in the Morton Arboretum (Lisle, IL) and in a nursery in St. Charles, IL, but I didn't yet have it "down," and so I have vowed to "get it right" next time. You see, if the truth be known, I believe I am a quite slow learner, a learner who simply has to repeat, see again and again, talk to knowledgeable people and then, finally, make it my own. It is the best challenge a 57 year-old could hope to have.

Finishing Up

Time would fail me to tell abou the rest, the Caucasian Stonecrop and Spreading Cotoneaster, the two massive alliums (Allium giganteum and Persian Onion), the very attractive Celosia spicata 'Xantippe', which has a white, red or yellow-tipped spike coming out of the top. Ornamental kale (Brassica oleracea) was there, as was an attractive Globe Amaranth, Gomphrena globosa. Here is a picture of the latter. I will close with the mention of the lowly Barrenwort, Epimedium x rubrum, whose name as "Bishop's Hat" helps us visualize it (the hat or mitre is upside down), but it is simply a ground-cover. The word 'wort,' meaning "plant, herb, vegetable," was a frequent old botanical name of plants. Examples given in the Century dictionary are bone-, bishop-, blood-, cole-, liver-, lung-, mead-, mug-, rib-, spear-, stich-wort, etc. Well, I guess I still have lots to learn, but the journey is becoming so interesting...isn't it?

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