Back in the day, calling someone a pansy was an insult. It meant weak and wimpy. For boys or men, it meant effeminate. Today there are many newer and more pungent insults to choose from. But pansies as a metaphor for fragility, weakness or possible homosexuality never did make an ounce of sense.
Pansies are tough little flowers that sometimes bloom through the winter, even when it freezes, snows or blows. Once they are established, they also manage to spread seeds that sprout in even the most difficult places.
They bloom in cracks in the sidewalk, in the middle of a lawn, or nearly hidden at the feet of shrubs or amidst patches of tall perennials. By midsummer, they usually fade and seem to disappear. They go dormant, returning when their flowers are needed to provide some cheer when the weather is dreadful and nothing else is blooming.
Many gardeners think of pansies as a bygone relic of their apron-wearing great-grandmothers’ gardens. People who’ve never grown them are hesitant to try because they look so delicate, and perhaps also because of old associations with insults.
I’m a recent convert to pansy fandom myself, having impulse-bought a pot of them one rainy fall day because the flowers were a rich, plain purple, without the multi-colored “faces” that other people seem to prefer. However, some with multi-colored faces were hiding in the pot, so now I have both.
I’m happy to report that there’s evidence in my neighborhood that a few people still appreciate pansies: In an otherwise tidy lawn, there’s a nice big patch in exuberant bloom. Someone had carefully mowed around them.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about a sea captain who ignored advice to turn back because of an approaching storm. He lashed his little daughter to the mast for her safety. He died in the storm, and (spoiler alert) his little girl died too. It’s a very sad, very memorable story.
That poem helped me remember the name of hesperis matronalis, a flowering plant whose seeds, I imagine, were deposited in my garden by a gale-force wind. For a long time, I was very puzzled about why a flower was named after a wrecked ship. Then I looked it up online and discovered its name comes from "hespera," the Greek word for evening. That’s because its flowers are especially fragrant in the evening. Still, as a mnemonic device, you can’t beat a shipwreck.
Hesperis is also a plant that is tougher than it looks. It’s a European immigrant now growing in gardens, roadside ditches, undeveloped land and gardens from coast to coast — a testament to its talent for making seeds light enough to be carried far and wide by the wind.
In some places it’s considered invasive; in Washington it’s just enthusiastic. In a garden, it will eventually start coming up here, there and everywhere, but it’s easy to pull up or transplant. Left alone, it will get 4- or 5-feet tall, but if clipped it can be kept shorter and will become bushier.
It typically blooms in the spring, and you may see it flowering along roadsides now. If its faded flowers are cut off, it will keep blooming as long as you keep cutting, which in my case is through August.
Our third nominee for tough plant status is lunaria. As the Missouri Botanical Garden notes, “Although biennial, this plant freely self-seeds in the garden, and once established, will never disappear.”
I can attest to that: I have pulled it up for years, but it keeps coming back. Now I leave a couple of plants each year, and though the leaves are prone to ugly fungus attacks, it doesn’t seem to mind. It has abundant small purplish flowers in the spring, which then form the flat round disks that hold its seeds.
Lunaria has a unique way of packaging its seeds. These will soon become translucent white and resemble the moon.
Jill Severn | For The JOLT News
By midsummer the disks will ripen, dry, and turn a translucent, lunar white. Some people call them silver dollar plants, or money plants. They make wonderful dried bouquets. Or, left to their own devices, more lunaria plants.
Pansies, hesperis and lunaria exceed our expectations in two ways: They grow, flower and reproduce more than we expect, and they help us recognize that a bit of disorder in our gardens, our lawns — and possibly our lives — can be a gift.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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sunshine39
Thank you, Jill.
Now looking forward to transplanting Hesperis to my reclaimed field. Sounds like it will exist nicely
with the persistent native grasses.
Friday, May 23 Report this
Terrilovesanimals
I love all these and always will!
Thursday, May 29 Report this