Pond plants, shade or sun, early or late blooming add interest to our ponds and bog gardens. The umbrella plant Darmera
Peltata is one of the earliest bloomers in the cooler climates. The plant will not survive in the heat of the sub tropics
or tropics, so you Midwesterners have the jump on us Southerners with this plant.
In some parts of the country, the umbrella plant, also called Indian rhubarb, makes beautiful purple globes long before other flowers are blooming!. It's called Darmera peltata in Latin and is normally found along the West Coast of the United States, but in the northern parts. I have seen this plant in the rain forest of the Hoh River in Olympic National Park, in the Botanical Gardens in Portland, Oregon, but never where I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. That is our loss because its broadleaf beauty is an asset to the water garden.
Characteristics of this plant are as follows:- Zone: 5 to 7
- Plant Type: Herbaceous perennial
- Family: Saxifragaceae
- Missouri Native: No
- Native Range: Northwestern California to southwestern Oregon
- Height: 3 to 5 feet
- Spread: 3 to 5 feet
- Bloom Time: April Bloom Data
- Bloom Color: Pink to white
- Sun: Part shade to full shade
- Water: Medium to wet
- Maintenance: Low
We can see with this umbrella plant, one of the problems with using common names for plants as opposed to Latin names. Here in Louisiana, we know Cyperus alternifolius as umbrella plant. Our southern umbrella plant looks like this:
- Grass-like leaves borne on a culm which is triangular and solid; small flower bracts that are not attractive; foliage carried in a whorl at the top of the plant.
- Plant Form or Habit: rounded
- Plant Use: medium foliage pot plant
- Exposure: medium
- Flower Color: beige
- Blooming Period:
- Height: 4 feet
- Width: 2 feet
- Foliage Texture: medium
- Heat Tolerance: high
- Water Requirements: water or bog
So you see what problems we can run into when using common names rather than botanic ones.
Pitcher Plants are great for water gardens - they love boggy soil and are pretty and interesting. Like a Venus Fly Trap,
they enjoy munching on insects!
Named Sarracenia Purpurea in Latin, the Pitcher plant has a tube-like stalk with an opening at the top. It is a carnivorous plant, meaning meat eater. It loves mosquitoes and the occasional fly if it happens to stop by for a visit. The Pitcher plant has a floppy "lid" keeps water from pouring into it. The insect crawls in looking for a drink, but finds a pool of digestive fluid that will consume the insect. The insect drowns and is consumed by either bacterial action or by enzymes produced by the plant itself. Some Pitchers contain insect larvae that feed on trapped prey and the larval excretions are absorbed by the plant. Whatever the mechanism of digestion, the prey items are converted into a solution of amino acids, peptides, phosphates, ammonium and urea, from which the plant obtains its mineral nutrition (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus).
The inward sides of the plant are slippery and grooved and have downward pointing hairs that prevent the doomed insect from crawling out and escaping to save himself. The Pitcher plant lives in nitrogen poor soils and have learned to supplement the inadequate nitrogen in the soil by eating bugs.
The Pitcher plants are great bog plants. They love warmer weather and thrive in the wild wetlands of Louisiana where acidic, boggy conditions are the norm. They will bloom well in partial shade and filtered sun.
For a water garden, these plants do well in a bog area set up next to the pond where the soil stays very moist but the plant isn't completely in the pond. They love a low spot in the garden or a spot in the rain garden that you have built to recycle the excess rain water from the gutter down spouts, so it doesn't run off into the storm drains.
~Jan Goldfield
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