Wildflowers for the Garden

a gift from the desert

It was an eventful weekend. Late Saturday night I stepped outside, down the hill, turned my ankle on a damaged step, spun around and fell. I laid there for a few moments, pulled myself together, and trudged on to finish up what I was doing.

The problem was that apparently I had—in addition to smacking my back and shoulder—also hit my head, unbeknownst to me. Some blue lights hovering occasionally in my field of vision went away after a little while, but some other symptoms took much longer to wear off. Too long, in fact.

Eventually my sister wisely took me in hand, which resulted in my spending the small hours of Monday morning in the emergency room, where a CT scan confirmed I did not have a brain bleed or fracture and am healing up from a probable concussion. I then spent the larger hours of that morning on the one-and-a-half-hour ride home.

It was then that I noticed the flowers by the roadside.

What were they, I wondered, making that intriguing haze of dusky pink over low-growing bushes?

I arrived home and was none the wiser until I wandered around the yard later. In front of me there was a woody plant I have anticipated removing, thinking it was another of the myriad sweet acacias growing on the property. It’s in too tight a spot for a small tree.

But then I saw that it had a few of those dusky powderpuffs on it. Here was my mystery plant right in my own yard!

Finally able to examine it closely, I could identify it fairly quickly by those long stamens, which are the showy part of the “flower”. This is Calliandra eriophylla, the fairyduster, in its wild form.

And this was not the only plant. Another of my “small-growing sweet acacias” is not Vachellia either, but another fairly well-grown Calliandra. Considering they have grown only on natural rainfall, they are robust specimens and both seem fairly mature.

I was thrilled. I still am. I loved growing Calliandra californica in my earlier garden. It’s a larger and much brighter shrub, with its brilliant red stamens; and I hope to plant another though its cold-hardiness might be put to the test here. It is, after all, a native of Baja California, with its milder winters.

But this smaller Calliandra has its own beauty and is just as attractive to hummingbirds, so they say. It certainly will give the garden a strong sense of place, growing as it does from the wild.

It is clearly also appealing to bees, and I spent a happy bee-photography session among its delicate blooms.

Yes, there is a bee in that photo!