SCARLET SALVAGE FROM A STORM DRAIN

After working for ten years at Leach Botanical Garden in a non-botanical position, what had always been my low key interest in the plant world began to grow and sprout in new directions. The arrival of grandkids spurred my vegetative ponderings. Memories of sprouting avocado pits in jam jars and pots with petunia seeds got me thinking. At the same time, Mary is the person in our household who wields the garden tools and so my greenish thumb needed to find other expressions.  The most recent of these adventures began at  our sidewalk. In addition to the volunteering grasses, dandelion, miner's lettuce, and similar nuisance plants, one stood out. Stalky green stems with long leaves were snaking out from a storm drain and the heads of some of the stalks bore bright red flower clusters.  I had not paid any attention to this happening until the flower clusters erupted. The plant's tenacity and choice of home intrigued me.   

Happily I had been introduced by one of my coworkers to iNaturalist a site that encourages everyone to be observers and reporters of the natural world around us.  Participants can log their observations and get help making identifications of hard-to-identify flora and fauna.  The site also has an accompanying app called Seek which is free to download and simple to use.  The user can take a picture of a plant or animal with their phone via the app and it will do a remarkable job of identifying the subject.  So with phone in hand I acquired a photo of the red blossomed plant.  The result very quickly told me that it was Centranthus ruber also called Red Valerian. (It goes by other common names but I'll come back to that.) Most interesting to me was that the plant's origins are in the Mediterranean which sparked interest in honor of Mary's Greek half of the family. Not surprisingly it tolerates rocky, alkaline conditions and hot sunny climes. Thus the exposed sidewalk which would absorb heat even during colder weather and the dark, damp grit of the storm drain.  Wikipedia also noted that while it is sold as a garden perennial here it is banned in South Africa which it loves so much that it's become seriously invasive. 

In the way my brain often does,  I began to wonder if I could successfully carve the plant--or some part of it out of its dark hole and make it my own in a planter.  I shared the information I had gathered with Mary and she agreed as she usually does that it was very interesting.  She was pleased to hear that it was attractive to pollinators, a characteristic we are encouraging.  All of this happened in the summer of 2022. So I did use a barbecue fork to extract three or four long sections of the plant and repotted them in a pot with some 'growth stimulant'. They died.

As I write, a year has passed and despite my chopping and cutting Centranthus burst forth again this spring from its storm drain.  Happily surprised as if it were a personal encouragement to me,  I picked a different tool this year and used care in reaching as deeply into the recesses as I could. There were many more sprouting stems and so I harvested more.  This year,  I put half of the stems in an empty mouthwash plastic container (recycle) with soil, taking care to add sand and grit.  The other half of the stems went into a tall drinking glass of water.  I added some growth enhancer to each and then observed.  After about ten days, the stems in the soil were clearly not doing well.  The other stems, though, clearly were getting an uptake of water and were not looking too much worse for wear.  This week I repotted the stems from water to soil and they appear to continue to live.  By June I'll know. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Meanwhile, about those other common names for the ruddy plant!  It is also called Jupiter's beard, fox's brush, and Devil's beard (in South Africa no surprise).  I've included a picture of my specimen in process as well as a photo from Wikimedia showing some of the range in color which Valerian can exhibit besides red. More to follow.