Thursday, July 19, 2012

A Little Knowledge

or Dangerous Things

Every time I start to write about wine cups, black widows get in the way. 

Callirhoe involucrata

Sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.  From wine cups to black widows it's a short step, you know, to idle musing about injustice, fear and ignorance, but somehow then a long step back to wine cups.  It's just that black widows get such a bad rap.  Yes, they're venomous, if not to a lethal degree then certainly to a painful one.  But just because they can hurt you doesn't mean they want to.  They're so far from being aggressive, they're downright chicken-hearted.  They are shrinking violets.  Jumping spiders will return stare for stare as you observe them; orb weavers will ignore you magnificently until you finally get bored and leave.  To daddy-long-legs, you're just so much geography to be traversed.  But let a black widow—that dangerous, venomous, bulbous, patent-leather spider with the hot red markings—catch sight of you, and she will go running for shelter.  She may even abandon her web altogether and find a safer place to start again.  (The males aren't web-builders; nor are they as poisonous.)  She won't bite unless she runs out of options.

A black widow huddled up as small as small can be (which isn't
very small in her case) to avoid me.  The white sphere is her egg sac.

Once you know how terrified black widows really are of you, and how harmless they would very much prefer to be, and how good their thick, messy webs are at trapping the biggest pests, wholesale destruction starts to seem a little unfair.  I tear down the webs now and then with a (long) stick to discourage them, and do destroy any egg sacs I find, but as long as the spiders stay off the Adirondack chair, I don't go out of my way to kill them.  I wear jeans, shoes with toes, and gloves (among other things) to garden in, and the black widows (in theory) run away at the sight of me.  Still, you never know when an unintentional act will leave a black widow feeling like she's run out of options.  A little knowledge has me living dangerously.  It's fair, though:  we're not at peace, exactly, but we're all very non-aggressive.

Just like wine cups.  Callirhoe involucrata occasionally gets a bad rap, too, but mostly from people who've never grown it, who judge its appearance but don't know what it's really like.  I have come across people who take one look at its luxuriant growth and far-reaching stems and mark it down as a thug:  bishop's weed with blooms, bindweed with bling.

The leaves fill a geranium-shaped spot in my heart.

A little knowledge, a little experience shows you just how little danger wine cups pose.  The three-foot stems don't creep and twine and root themselves in inconvenient places; they just grow horizontally rather than vertically, no more a threat to your garden than a salvia or a daisy stem.  They may thread their way up through taller supports, but they're not kudzu or ivy, overwhelming their hosts.  They just...appreciate the support.  They lean.  They relax.  They take it easy, in someone else's arms.  Finding your rosemary and gaura sporting bright magenta blooms is really quite charming.

Among the gaura.  The flowers open during the day and close at night.

Not only are wine cups not aggressive, but they die back to the crown in winter and (at least in my garden) the worst of summer heat.  Leaves re-emerge when conditions improve, but they do leave blank spots where lush greenery used to reside.  I find that growing them among the autumn sage  (Salvia greggii) works well—the wine cups fill the space while the salvia grows back from its winter pruning, and then the salvia takes over as the wine cups fade.  If wine cups were like bindweed, we wouldn't have to make these little plans.

C. involucrata in strong, mid-day sun near a west-facing wall.  The new growth
is monsoonal; the brown is left over from the last heat wave.  The wine cups
grown in more shade still have all their leaves and are blooming well.

My limited experience is that wine cups are borderline plants here in Albuquerque.  They're native primarily to the Great Plains and, while their good, thick taproot makes them drought tolerant, drought and desert are different things; in my garden they look best with a little more moisture and a little less sun.  They also prefer cooler temperatures and don't bloom for as long here as they do elsewhere, but six weeks in flower is still nothing to sneeze at.  Otherwise, give them good drainage, and watch them go—in a vigorous but non-aggressive sort of way.

A little knowledge, a little experience:  doors open, possibilities beckon...  What a dangerous thing.


In the interests of full disclosure, though, wine cups do have one bad habit.  While they don't self-seed with abandon or require dead-heading, they do shed dry blossoms wherever they feel like it.  They're a little messy.  You wouldn't think that reaching in to tidy them up would be a problem, and it wouldn't be.

Messy.

If the black widows weren't in the way.

18 comments:

  1. Stacy, This is the first time I've heard of this plant, and I can see the resemblance to geranium (one of my favorite plants). Living with a little messiness seems like the better part of valor here! -Jean

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    1. Jean, I first saw it threaded through the lawn in a rest area off I-25 in Colorado and fell in love. You're right--a little messiness is a small price to pay! I noticed that Allan Becker has been growing it in Montreal. It's so adaptable, it might even enjoy your sandy soil in Maine... http://allanbecker-gardenguru.squarespace.com/journal/2011/1/26/do-you-grow-callirhoe-a-unique-and-little-known-perennial.html

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  2. Your black widows seem much less scary than their image. A bit annoying, perhaps, but not very scary.

    The wine cups, though, are lovely. That sort of magenta / hot pink is tricky to pair with other flower colours, but it's so stunning that it would be a shame not to have it. (And the flowers really POP against the green foliage.)

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    1. Søren, if I had toddlers running around the garden and exploring every nook and cranny I'd still find black widows very scary, as to children the bite can be fatal. Otherwise annoying is about right.

      I've seen wine cups paired really effectively with sulfur-yellow evening primroses and Russian sage; yellow and hot pink are maybe more popular together in hot climates, though.

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  3. I love wine cups/poppy mallow and how they wend through other plants. Mine don't do well because they're on the south side of my house, but there is still a fleeting bloom now and then.

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    1. GirlSprout, that's interesting about the south side. Despite what the catalogs say, I'm becoming convinced that at least in NM wine cups aren't full sun plants. I'm thinking of trying them in the dappled shade under the trees and seeing what happens.

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  4. I don't grow wine cups, but I bet they would look especially beautiful draping over a pot or wall. As for the black widows, I'm afraid they and I will never be friends!

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    1. Holley, I don't blame you for not claiming friendship with the black widows! For some reason I've actually begun to feel sorry for them lately.

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  5. Aren't the contents of the egg sac more frightening than the lone spider ?

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    1. b-a-g, the young spiders aren't poisonous yet, so the innards of the egg sac aren't frightening but perhaps a little squeamish-making just on general principles.

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  6. I adore this plant but it is not native and did not do well for me...it is a worthy plant though and one we should not judge badly...great post as I did not know a lot about black widows.

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    1. Isn't it a beauty, Donna? I'm sorry it didn't do well for you, though. Its leaves make it look more like it would be at home in your part of the country than mine!

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  7. It's important to fill that geranium shaped hole in one's heart and wine cups do seem to do just that. What a gorgeous colour - and thoughtful, gracious growing habit. I once watched entranced as a spider's egg sac hatched. I blew very, very gently on it and hundreds of teeny weeny spiders slow motion exploded as they scurried (slowly) in different directions. Quite a sight but I can understand your black widow population control. Thanks for a lovely Sunday morning (for me) post, Stacy. David

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    1. That geranium shape is so very specific. It isn't easy to find something that will fill it. The wine cups' color really is gorgeous--deep and intense, and translucent in the right light. Some flowers on the same plant will be different shades, too. They're among my favorite "discoveries" out here.

      Baby spiders are such perfect little spider shapes. I do hate to destroy the egg sacs, Dave, but something really has to be done (and apparently no one else is magically going to appear and do it, the slackers). I know of at least 8 adult females in the garden, and they produce half a dozen sacs a year. Eek.

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  8. Bindweed with bling! I had to laugh at that one...I am trying to get rid of the bindweed coming into my garden from my neighbour's unkept garden - an impossible task, but I am still keeping it at bay. Never heard of wine cups before but they do look lovely, there are lots of messy plants that require a bit of tidying up now and then, no reason for not having them :-) As for black widows - very happy that they don't 'grow' in London!

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    1. Bindweed is neverending, Helene! I used to love it as a child and am afraid I enjoyed releasing the seeds from their pods and strewing them around... When the wine cups are so thoughtful as to deadhead themselves, it does seem a little churlish to complain that they're messy. Slugs are enough for you to have to cope with in a damp summer--if you had black widows, too, that would just add insult to injury!

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  9. We have black widows, carefully rescued and installed in a quieter corner, when he brings in the day's firewood. To be honest, I've never even heard of anyone being bitten. But yes, careful, and with gloves.

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    1. Diana, I've never known anyone who was bitten, either, though the pest control guy who comes by work every few months has some tales to tell. My biggest concern is just putting my hand on one accidentally while moving a pot or something. I can't quite see myself actually rescuing a black widow... My hat's off to the Ungardener!

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