Bloom Day April 2016



An all-purple-y Bloom Day.  Above, 'Perle d'Azur'.

Purple, mauve, violet, plum, lavender, lavender-blue, purple blue, and so forth.  A color that evokes luxury, strength, and the sweetness of summer berries.

'Purple Queen' Iochroma, a favorite of humming birds, looks mauve in the photo.  
 In photos, Clematis 'Wisley' looks more blue than its in-reality purple. 
 Clematis 'Viola' is a nodder.
 Jackmanii Superba has a mauve center stripe running down the center of each tepal.
 Cerinthe is almost complete for the year.  Heat will kill it off any day now.
 The bees love the flowers, as do the hummingbirds.
 Clematis 'Perle d'Azur', an exquisite lavender-blue.
 Osteospermum 'Fouth Dimension Silver' opens with a purple-touched center that ages to a thrilling navy blue. 
 Salvia 'Waverly' opens with white flowers  that age to lavender.  The flower stem is purple-y black.
 The purple-violet of Salvia 'Amistad' is deliciously saturated.
 Rosa 'Ebb Tide' can open deeply purple on a cloudy day; here it has aged to mauve.
 Clouds of purple and white Limonium perezii mix with California native Woolly Blue Curls, Trichostema lanatum.  Black Aeonium rosettes in the foreground.
 Velvety rich Iris, 'Cobra's Eye'
 Trichostemna lanata's pinky-lavender fuzzy buds open to purple-blue flowers with thready blue 'curls'. 
 The native annual Lupin, often seen on disturbed open soil along roadsides. 
 Purple on this Iris, 'Paprika Fonos',  a rusty red with touches of yellow--the thin stripes near the yellow "beard" are pure purple.

 The alluring plum of Salvia 'Love and Wishes'
 And to finish, in late afternoon sun, a selection of our native California Penstemon heterophyllus 'Blue Springs'.  True blue touched with purple, white, and magenta. 
 Happy Bloom Day!

Comments

  1. Wow! Beautiful blues and purples. I've been battling how the camera picks up these shades too, vs. what my eye sees. Been toying with adding a Jackmanii Superba to the garden, thanks for reminding me how beautiful it is!

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    1. I love Clematis--they must do great up into the PNW where there is plenty of rain. That Rooguchi--ooh!

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  2. Funny, I almost did a chartreuse and blue post, but I found it impossible to limit myself. I love your salvias. Happy GBBD to you!

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    1. Had so many flower pictures--had to limit the post! Chartreuse and blue--love those colors.

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  3. That's a great way to organize your Bloom Day post - and whittle down the photos. I'm sure you'd be clicking photos for a week if you tried to cover the full rainbow in your garden. We share a few plants. If my woolly blue curls ever develop a mass like yours, I'll be ecstatic - for now, I just count myself lucky the plant is still alive after 2 years.

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    1. Yes I had too darn many photos. Had to reduce them to a manageable number.

      I read the Trichostemna is a pioneer plant, one that likes a bare expanse such as after a wild fire, like the Lupin--it fixes nitrogen in the soil and is a relatively short-lived plant in nature. I gave mine a bare expanse having removed plants due to the drought and that has worked well. (Or else just dumb luck--probably more likely!)

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  4. Love all your purples, a most regal bloom day post.

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  5. All my favourite colours – on a long list of plants I would love to have! I have just sown Limonium for the first time, Limonium suworowii – but it looks very different to your Limonium perezii. Will be interesting to see if I can get them to flower, it is still very cold here and spring is unusually slow to take off.

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    1. The Limonium suworowii is quite striking! I am not familiar with that at all. L. perezii is quite common here and is something of an invader in San Diego county, though it feeds the native bees and butterflies. I envy your slow-to-arrive spring, it feels like summer here already.

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