Yesterday's Master Gardener Class

Yesterday's class was a two-parter. The first half was conducted by Chris Wiesinger and it was on southern bulbs. Chris has been dubbed "the bulb hunter". His thesis at A&M (2004) was about starting a company that specializes in southern heirloom bulbs. The deal is, he then went out and did it, The Southern Bulb Company ! And he's just a few minutes from us in Golden. Chris is now an internationaly recognized expert that commands high speaker fees and is booked through the fall. However, he still lives in a little cabin on his farm and does most of the work there himself including the propagating, growing, harvesting, packing, and shipping. And he's a really nice guy. But all that's another story.

The second part of the class was on Native Plants - and native to Wood County. It was a fascinating class. One of the local Master Gardeners talked about plants that grow wild in our area and about native plants that she planted "along the path in the woods" at her acreage. The list she discussed had 37 plants on it. When I got home I had to take a walk down the Orange Trail. I wanted to look at one plant in particular but, on a first walk through (with no notes), I found seven of the 37 enjoying a home here.

At the part of the trail that's the furtherest from the house, there is a very large area filled with this plant. I've been calling it an umbrella plant because of the shape. In the presentation, it showed the plant with white flowers and that's what I went to look for - and they were there - down under the leaves. It's really unusual. Now I know that the plant is Mayapple (it fruits later), or Podophyllum peltatum. Greg and Jill noticed these when they were here.

Another plant that I found in abundance is Red Buckeye, Aesculus pavia. I was looking at them first because of the leaves but then found some blooming. The flowers and leaves will all be gone by August.

It's a bit hard to see in this picture but the white blossoms are on our second dogwood tree. We knew we had one but this is further from the house (and along the trail).