The Tale of the Talinum

Here is Mr. Jack Daniel presiding over a rock filled with fossils and my Talinum parviflorum. Plant, rock, and swizzle stick are all foundlings. Mr. Daniel was rescued from the mud at the Steeplechase course three days after the 2009 Iroquois Steeplechase. I don't remember where I found the fossils, but I found them in the eighties. The Talinum, the prairie fameflower, was a volunteer I found last summer in a most unusual place. It is not blooming yet, since it was almost murdered by a cutworm, but I have hopes that it and its ten seedlings will flower this summer.

Here is its story-


Years ago , in the side yard of my old house, I planted a rock garden. Smaller plants, and rarer, I placed in containers. I wanted to grow the Limestone Fameflower-Talinum calcaricum- which grows in Middle Tennessee's cedar glades, but I could not buy the plant anywhere. I settled for the Prairie Fameflower, and for several years it prospered and seeded everywhere. I even gave some plants to the people at Moore and Moore Garden Center here in Nashville. But time and shade, and crowding out and neglect overcame my rock garden, and when I left the house,and my friends and neighbors rescued what was left, there were no more fameflowers.

I moved a few of my plants to containers at my apartment. Some of my old plastic self-watering pots I brought along too. One had a split in it, but I kept it in the bed of my truck because it had a gravel and soil mix I thought I might use. The summer grew hot, and I procrastinated . I kept meaning to save the soil and toss the pot, but it was the summer of my Annus Horriblis, and I had no energy to do it. Every work day the pot rode downtown and spent the night in a parking lot. Every time I drove the wind whipped at the few tough weeds still alive in it. Then one morning I walked out to get in the truck ,and saw a purple flower in the pot among the fried weeds. I had my talinum back, and who knew how long its seed had waited. I moved the pot to my foyer garden where the fameflower bloomed till fall. And then- I could not find it. Lost again I thought. Until it came back this spring. The day after I found it,it disappeared.Then I saw its bulbous stem with the green needle leaves lifeless on the soil beneath it. I blamed the chipmunks at first, but then realized that this was the work of a cutworm. I rescued it, and gave it its own pot and put it on the top tier of a plant stand. Unless cutworms can fly it is safe. I found its offspring in the split pot and moved them to high ground too. Under the watchful eye of Mr. Jack Daniel.

Click on the photo to enlarge.