It’s too cold here and the plants freeze - remember February 2021? Texas sage plants were sent to the compost. Put in simpler terms, if Texas sage were native to North Central Texas, you’d see it growing here on our hillsides. This newspaper is read far and wide, so perhaps I might have misjudged on that remark, but my point is that a plant is only native where you find it growing in nature. Lesson Number One: This may be a plant that’s native somewhere in Texas, but it’s not native in your yard. But I’ll use the common name nonetheless. I’ll stick to more standard remedies, thank you. I found one shaky reference to steeping the plants’ leaves for some kind of herbal tea to ease the onset of the common cold. So is the uncommon name “barometer bush” that refers to its tendency to throw out blooms two or three days after a rain shower.īut the name “Texas sage” seems to have emerged as the most commonly used of the common names in recent years. Since the plant is native to the Chihuahuan Desert and north into Southwest Texas and New Mexico, we’ve adopted the Spanish word for ash (“ceniza” or “cenizo”) as its common name.
According to the respected Missouri Botanical Gardens, the genus name is from Greek leucos meaning “white” and phyllon meaning “whitish foliage.” The species name frutescens refers to the plant’s shrub-like growth habit. Botanically, it’s Leucophyllum frutescens. I’ve been growing it on and off for more than six decades, and over that time it has both excited me and broken my heart. I’m going to share a lot of personal feelings about Texas sage. And it has! It’s been a dazzling display that has sent many a gardener into local nurseries to pick up plants of their own. If drops in barometric pressure, local rainfall and high humidity are triggers for getting a plant to come into bloom, Texas sage should have been flowering its branches off this past week.
0 kommentar(er)
