Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Jan 4

Happy New Gardening Year! Above, a striped rose growing in Turkey, of all places, a couple of years ago. Is everything frozen where you are?

Art

Snow Patterns from Nature Nomad

Morning Shadows from Eromero

Old art:

Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

From Neal in Israel:

The mango gave more fruit than last year, but still not much. The fruit to flowering ratio is very low, perhaps depressed by the fact that there was already intense heat in the spring/early summer when the fruit was just setting. Also, the tree isn’t from one of the varieties which produce dense clumps of small fruits. Instead, it produces much larger fruits, each of which dangles its own long stem.

They look wonderful to me.

Ah, Nature

Humans are blind to ultraviolet light. But bugs can see it! Ever wondered what a flower looks like to a butterfly or bee? Well, now we know.

Photographer Craig Burrows snapped photos of flowers in ultraviolet light. No wonder bees and butterflies love them so much!

Growwithnith Dec. 25

Puttering

We have some grafters in The Horde. Planning any grafting projects this year?

Types of tree grafting. pic.twitter.com/HCqF38FVYk

— FunFacts (@funfacts_avatar) December 28, 2024

Adventure

Bergen, Norway

Gardens of The Horde

From burnthewitch, Eupatorium was once used for fever and other maladies. It is still described at drugs.com.

Traditional/Ethnobotanical uses

Boneset has been used as a charm and as a medicinal remedy for centuries by indigenous North Americans. As a charm, the root fibers were applied to hunting whistles with the belief that they would increase the whistle's ability to call deer. As an herbal remedy, American Indians used boneset as an antipyretic (to reduce fevers). The early settlers used the plant to treat rheumatism, dropsy, dengue fever, malaria, pneumonia, and influenza. The name boneset was derived from the plant's use in the treatment of breakbone fever, a term describing the high fever that often accompanies influenza. Boneset was official in the US Pharmacopeia from 1820 to 1900.

It has some liver toxicity.

NCSU describes some companion plants and:

Description

Boneset is a large herbaceous, clump-forming rhizomatous perennial herb in the aster (Asteraceae) family that is native to the eastern USA and Canada and as far west as TX, NB and the Dakotas. It can be found in various kinds of wetlands, including marshes, bogs, fens, seeps, edges of rivers, sandy flats and ditches. The plant will grow 4-6 feet tall with a 2-4 foot spread and can form colonies.

The Latin name, Eupatorium, is derived from Eupator, a 1st century BCE king of Pontus, famed for his herbal skills. The species name, perfoliatum, means "through the leaf" since the stem seems to grow through the paired leaves.

Boneset has small white flowers that appear in late summer and fall. The plant grows well in average, medium to wet soils with a consistent water source. It prefers full sun or part shade and tolerates both sandy and clay soils with plenty of organic matter. It will tolerate short-term occasional flooding.

Use this plant in the native pollinator garden and wetland areas such as ponds, streams, marshes or rain and water gardens.

This plant was selected as the 2003 NC Wildflower of the Year, a program managed by the North Carolina Botanical Garden with some financial support from the Garden Club of North Carolina.

Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec. 28

The famous Pat* has some lovely personal follow-up on one feature from last week:

Shiny-Brite ornaments!!, from Pat*

My husband and I were very interested in the article about the WWII-era ornaments and the Shiny-Brite name, because we actually have some of those ornaments.

Many years ago, when I’d just graduated college and we’d just gotten married, we bought a house in Michigan. Our neighbors were a widow of 95 or so, named Mrs. Kleinhans, and a maiden lady of Swedish ancestry of 75 or so, named Miss Lundahl. (God give them good rest; they were always kind to us.) When Miss Lundahl was moving (I assume to an assisted living facility), she asked if we’d like to have her Christmas ornaments, and told us some of them were very old. They’ve had places on our Christmas trees every year since then, but now we know part of their story.

In the first photo, the bottom two ornaments aren’t metallic inside, and have stiff paper caps - these are surely the ones made later in the war, when metals weren’t available for civilian uses like this. The ornament with blue stripes shows a seam, and I’m guessing this was an earlier version - it still has a metal top, but it doesn’t say Shiny Brite on it.

The second photo has three post-war ornaments - you can see part of the Shiny Brite logo atop the snow-capped ornament.

Thank you for giving us this insight into our treasured ornaments!

Those ornaments really mean something! What a great story.

I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

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posted by K.T. at 01:27 PM

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