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Machilus thunbergii 'Ulleung Island'

You’re a good sport!

The other morning when pulling into the parking lot at work, I noticed a broad leafed evergreen tree, growing on the edge of Tony and Anita’s private garden, that had a bright yellow spot near the top. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a bright gold-leaf branch sport on Machilus thunbergii ‘Ulleung Island’. […]

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Agave ovatifolia 'Vanzie'

Re-arranging Limbs on the Family Tree – When is an Agave not an Agave?

The botanical world has long been a tug of war between the taxonomic world of lumpers and splitters. Lumpers prefer to combine as many plants as they can into a single genus or species, while splitters prefer to categorize in the opposite direction, creating new genera and species when they feel the science dictates. We

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Dicentra exima

Cultivars – Evil or Misunderstood?

It’s shocking the number of articles, both in print and on-line that demean plant cultivars, as though they are the scourge of the natural world. These articles repeatedly proclaim that cultivars are not native, not environmentally desirable, and not of use to pollinators. Sadly, this is an indictment of our educational system, since it shows

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Agave sp. Sierra Azul seedlings

More than a century of mystery – Agave ‘Azul Monterrey’

The latest new mystery in the century plant world is a plant that first showed up on a German seed vendor’s website in Fall 2022 under the name, Agave ‘Azul Monterrey’. It was touted on the site as a potential new species, which always generates lots of buzz in the agave collector world. Seed were

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Southern ring-neck snake

Sneakily Ringing in the New Year

Working outside last weekend, I unknowingly uncovered this Southern ring-neck snake (Diadophis punctatus), who I’m sure was trying to stay warm. These cute snakes have one of the largest distributions of any North American native snake, ranging from Canada south to Florida. As many snakes as I’ve run across, I can’t specifically remember spotting one

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Lycoris aurea 'Guizhou' top, 'HuBei' bottom

Genetics matter

Last week, we were chatting on-line with one of our lycoris experts from China about the different forms of Lycoris aurea, when they mentioned the different foliage types that could be found in each region of China where the plant occurs. I should mention that the yellow-flowering Lycoris aurea has the widest native range of

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Rohdea x japensis

Randy Rohdeas

One of the most interesting discoveries over the last few years, is the realization that our rohdeas are mating with other rohdea species in the garden. Below is our first documented hybrid between the commonly grown Rohdea japonica and the little-known Taiwan native, Rohdea chinensis var. watanabei. We use the name Rohdea x japensis for

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A Cast of Hundreds

Flowering in early December, this is our first time to see blooms on a cast iron plant collected for us in 2018, by the late Alan Galloway in northern Vietnam. It didn’t take but a glance to realize that it represents another new, undescribed cast iron plant species. Our taxonomist, Zac Hill, has already been

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