Questions and observations

This is going to be one of those posts that jumps all over the place. Let's start with a question...

What plant is this? It grows at the border of my neighbor's yard and he says that it looks like "wild rhubarb". I'm usually pretty good at finding plant IDs online, but haven't had much luck with this one.

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Here are another couple of views of it:

It's got nice big leaves and if the deer don't eat it (they don't) I might add it to my garden somewhere...


The plant that was growing vigorously next to that first one though was much more attractive and caught my eye:

It's got shiny leaves and looks a lot like lemon balm, although the leaves are bigger. Anybody know what this one might be?


My wife and I were passing by the Missouri Botanical Garden on Monday and decided to hang out in the woodland garden for a while. The weather was beautiful, as we're getting cooler air from Canada these days (and the smoke from their forest fires).

It's Lantern Festival time at the garden, and although in general I really dislike the gaudy "lanterns" which mostly look like parade floats made of parachute cloth, there were some that I really liked:

In the woodland garden we moved from shady bench to shady bench trying to find a comfortable and quiet spot in which to sit. Since I've been focused lately in my own garden on the shady spots, this was a good chance to find some new plant ideas. I really loved this one:

Trillium recurvatum, labeled with the common name "Wood Lily", which may not be right. What impressed me about these was their size -- leaves so big! I thought all Trillium had smaller leaves? I wonder if I can find spot for these in my garden... do deer eat them?


Also loved this, which I think is a Persicaria:

Only two-toned instead of tri-hued like 'Painters Palette'. Or is it not a persicaria? I could not find a plant tag for this.


Speaking of plant tags, they're not always that useful. Here's an example where the tags aren't too helpful:

There are three or four unknown plants here with two tags. I wanted to know what one of the plants was, and hopefully one of the tags will belong to it (haven't searched yet). (I'm still debating whether or not I should add some plant tags to my own garden and this is one reason not to.)


I saw a couple of Pinellia pedatisecta which was exciting because I have one of these under the maple -- and a dozen or more seedlings. Then I saw this clump and was shocked:

That's so impressive -- huge! I hope mine will eventually reach this size!


Finally, one more exciting plant that I spotted as we were leaving:

That's seems to be a castor bean (Ricinis communis) with the largest leaves I have ever seen! They were easily 18" (45cm) across if not more. I must find out what variety this is -- you'll see it in my garden next year if I do!


So that's the end of my randomness. Hopefully I'll be more focused in tomorrow's post.

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