June in the Garden

Styrax obassia

It goes without saying that flowers are appealing. Some, like the magnolias and rhododendrons (mainstays in April and May in the Garden), are often flagrantly attractive. And while plants with merely charming flowers don’t get nearly the attention, their more modest floral outlays can still conceal wonders. Take the patterns made by the serial rows of tiny flowers that cover the “cones” of Rudbeckia occidentalis (see the August 2024 in the Garden blog), for example. For this month’s blog, I’ll highlight some lesser lights in the Botanical Garden, as well as a few stalwarts, but stay away from anything too dazzling.

With respect to flowers, there is plenty to choose from in June, and the genus Styrax is a good place to start. A familiar tree to most, the Japanese snowbell, Styrax japonicus, is represented by several forms in the Garden. Styrax japonicus ‘Fargesii’ (in the David C. Lam Asian Garden close to where Straley Trail and Campbell Trail intersect), is a 1924 selection from a presumably Chinese-derived plant, named for Paul Farges, who collected extensively in southwest China. Our newest Styrax addition, a seedling discovered in a Dutch nursery in 2001, ‘Evening Light’ (in the western-most Entrance Plaza bed) features bronze-purple spring growth. Both cultivars have drooping, slender-stalked white flowers with attractively-contrasting, purple-brown pedicels (the pedicel is the ultimate stalk in a branched flower structure). Note that other snowbells—there are several around the parking lot and in the Asian Garden—have green pedicels. Arguably our most exuberant and floriferous Japanese snowbell is a semi-weeping tree from a Korean wild seed collection (in the Campbell Glade, visible from the boardwalk).

Styrax confusus (Chinese snowbell) is located at the northeast corner of the Campbell Building (only visible from the boardwalk). Whereas Styrax japonicus displays its flowers in small clusters directly below and along its branches, this Chinese snowbell produces hanging flowers on white-woolly stalks that project more or less horizontally astride the branch tips. Styrax obassia (fragrant snowbell) (downslope of Lower Asian Way east of Ludlow Trail) shares this flower-stalk trait, but its flowers are larger and significantly more numerous (and quite nearly dazzling), and its leaves are the largest of all the snowbells. All styrax produce sweetly scented flowers, but those of S. obassia, especially so. Several other June-flowering snowbells are lurking in the David C. Lam Asian Garden, but don’t confuse them with the closely related and similar-looking Sinojackia rehderiana (Rehder jacktree) (Henry Trail just east of Upper Asian Way), which has half-sized, unscented snowbell flowers hidden amongst its foliage in early June. It’s worth a close look inside the flowers: the anther sacs (pollen-containing structures at the tips of the stamens) are lovely, though some magnification, such as with a hand lens, may be required to fully appreciate this understated beauty.

Stewartias are nearly all June flowering. The genus is mostly known by its brazen, peeling-bark species, and much ink has already been spilled on these showy ones. Two subtler stewartias are worth a mention, and these, Stewartia serrata (nodding stewartia) and Stewartia rostrata (beaked stewartia), have flowers, like all stewartias, that are beautiful (not too beautiful, mind). The nodding stewartia (several trees, either side of Delavay Trail south of Upper Asian Way, and where Straley Trail meets Lower Asian Way) produces nodding, creamy white flowers (i.e., they are visible from below the branches), but the finely scaly bark is pale brown, and the overall shape of the tree exceptionally pleasing. Stewartia rostrata (Lower Asian Way below Meyer Glade and Straley Trail west of Siebold Trail) bears larger, whiter flowers that are often stained pink along the petal edges, and has wonderfully textural, pale-grey-brown, finely fissured bark. Either would be considered attractive for their bark alone, were they not overshadowed by their shamelessly exfoliating cousins.

Climbing down from the trees, as it were—did I mention that we have a new tree climbing experience at the Botanical Garden? I’ve done the “Intro” and it’s a blast! —one can see plenty of modest floral beauty in June in our herbaceous collections. Iris x robusta ‘Gerald Darby’ (Entrance Plaza east bed and Amphitheatre Plantings) for example, produces leaves and flowers that might be considered more or less typical of irises, but its stems and stalks are flushed a pleasing purple-black, creating an unpretentious contrast. In the Amphitheatre plantings, ‘Gerald Darby’ is paired with the butterscotch-yellow-and-burnt-orange-flowered daylily, Hemerocallis forrestii ‘Perry’s Variety’. This daylily’s flowers are definitely striking, but never ostentatious. The more demure, pale-lemon-yellow-flowered Hemerocallis minor, a smaller than typical daylily, is suitably located in the Asian section of the E. H. Lohbrunner Alpine Garden, along the path just west of the Alpine Garden sign.

Three other irises are worth a mention for June flowering: Wilson’s iris, Iris wilsonii, Forrest’s iris, Iris forrestii, and the water iris, Iris laevigata. All are in the moist-soil beds along Upper Asian Way either east or west of Straley Trail. Wilson’s iris has lightly marked, pale-butter-yellow flowers atop slender stems, while Forrest’s are taller and yellow, but the falls, standards and style arms are closer to pineapple-yellow and interrupted by more prominent mahogany reticulations. Note that all irises have these petaloid structures (standards, which generally go up; falls, which are frequently broader and descend; and style arms, which are usually narrow and strap-like), and it is primarily the variation in them that allows one to distinguish between the more than 300 species in the genus. The aforementioned yellow irises should not be confused with the indiscreetly-brilliant-yellow flag iris, Iris pseudacorus, a species long banished from the Botanical Garden, not for its garishness, but because it is an invasive species. The selection of Iris laevigata in the Asian Garden is the cultivar ‘Royal Cartwheel’. The blue flowers come perilously close to being excessively showy, but they are definitely less extravagant than the Japanese water iris, Iris ensata, located a few steps away beside the Asian Garden Pond. Avert your eyes.