{"id":3159,"date":"2010-04-25T21:15:50","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T05:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=3159"},"modified":"2010-12-18T22:43:22","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T06:43:22","slug":"volunteers-and-other-arrivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/25\/volunteers-and-other-arrivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteers and Other Arrivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever decided that a weed was pretty, you’ll understand the botanical definition of “volunteer.” A volunteer is a plant that arrives in a garden, usually as seed, blown by wind or carried by bird. It’s a weed if you don’t want to keep it; it’s a volunteer if you do. My rule of thumb is that if it has nice flowers, and isn’t too invasive, it can stay. Most are annuals that re-seed, and are very low maintenance. For example, here are three volunteers which have arrived in our garden over the years: a Forget-Me-Not, a Geranium, and a Nasturtium.<\/p>\n

\"Forget-me-not<\/a>\"Geranium<\/a>\"Nasturtium<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, most plants in our garden are deliberate introductions, not accidental arrivals. Native to Italy, tiny green leaves of Baby’s Tears arrived as decoration in a bonsai<\/a> pot. They loved San Francisco’s Mediterranean climate, and were easy to propagate. Now they form great ground-covering masses wherever they find regular moisture, and add green to garden nooks. The next photo shows a yellow Freesia bloom, but a photo can’t capture its great fragrance. Native to South Africa, Freesias do well in our mild climate. The third photo shows a blue Love-in-the-Mist flower bud among lacy leaves.<\/p>\n

\"Baby's<\/a>\"Freesia<\/a>\"Love-in-the-Mist<\/a><\/p>\n

Our April garden also includes perennials, like purple African Daisies, a brilliant red Sage, and a bright blue Solanum. Also known as the Blue Potato Bush, Solanum is in the Nightshade family, and a relative of potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants. Ours came to us when we rescued a neighbor’s discarded plant, and nursed it back to health. No matter how they’ve found their way to our backyard, they’re all putting up a great spring show.<\/p>\n

\"Purple<\/a>\"Sage<\/a>\"Solanum<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever decided that a weed was pretty, you’ll understand the botanical definition of “volunteer.” A volunteer is a plant that arrives in a garden, usually as seed, blown by wind or carried by bird. It’s a weed if you don’t want to keep it; it’s a volunteer if you do. My rule of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-gardening","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3217,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}