I have a perversion.
When I go for a walk around my place, it
may appear that I’m enjoying my time in nature, but the truth is, I admit
it, that I’m always thinking about how to “improve” on nature.
Normal folks plant flower-beds, but
perverts such as myself try to make creations that give the illusion of
natural groupings. We like to improve on perfection.
That’s how I got started building a
group of Rose Mallow, Hibiscus
moscheutos about eight years
ago. I had a marshy area that I imagined would look great covered with
pink Rose Mallow.
A few miles from here is a collection of a white version
that went wild decades ago that now covers an area around an old pond with a couple of
acres of blooms in the late
summer.
Maybe you’ve seen Rose Mallow growing
near you, it’s a native in most of the south and in California, but it’s
commonly cultivated all over the east and Midwest.
It's a tough, stalky plant that grows
up from a very sturdy root crown. It grows taller than your head and in
late summer it provides a multitude of huge tropical-looking blossoms.
The blooming always starts about the third of August down here in my
little frost-pocket in southern Missouri and it will continue to bloom
almost, but not quite, to September.
As I say, I've been building a group
of Rose Mallow for several years now. They seem to thrive in the marshy,
wet ground that we have so much of. I top-dress them with compost about
once a year. In the most recent years, I’ve started having enough plants
to start dividing root clumps and multiplying the group.
Some of the advice I’ve read suggests
that the plants are very sensitive to having their roots disturbed, and
these folk recommend propagation by seed or tip cuttings, but all I can
say is that I haven’t had any of these problems, and in fact have been
pleasantly surprised by how well my specimens have taken to being moved.
Rose
Mallow comes out of the ground in shoots after just about everything else
is already up. It produces a light-green rather hairy leaf that makes you
think more of a weed, but then, always right on schedule, you have those
stunning big flowers, six inches or larger that cover the plant. All
through August the show goes on with fresh blossoms replacing the old ones
every day.
There are plenty of different cultivars
of Hibiscus moscheutos and you can find color variations from
white to deep red usually with a deep red center, hence one of the
common names, “Crimson-eyed Rose Mallow”.
For my purposes though, I had a
definite mission.
This picture was taken when the two initial plants were
about five years old.
