Six on Saturday: Fruits of the Season

Figs

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Gardens teach us many things.  Like any other education, you might want to believe you’ve learned everything there is to know; but the next week, the next semester, the next season, the next garden proves how much we still have to discover.  Gardening is a slow study; more than a lifetime can master.  And it can not be rushed.

One of the first lessons one grasps, an understanding that shades and colors all others, comes when one understands the nature of passing time.  Like a precisely choreographed dance routine, a garden unfolds and ripens within the context of time.

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Begonia grandis, perennial Begonia finally blooms by late summer.

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The wisdom of all the ancient schools is written within a season in the garden.  It is all there for those who will read it.  But only those who pause, and observe, and look for it will find it.  Like a ripening grape hidden under a leaf, knowledge grows in plain sight and yet also remains cloaked to a casual glance.

This is the season of fruition and ripening.  All of the promises and hopes that built through the winter and spring are maturing, now, into reality.

The hazelnut tree dances and shakes as squirrels scamper through its branches.  The ripening nuts satisfy with loud pops and crackles as a squirrel’s strong jaws crush them and the pieces rain down to the ground.  The nuts will be gone before they ripen, crushed into green fragments, snacks lying there waiting for other small animals to find.  A single huge buckeye pod swells in the upper garden.  all the others have been carried away already, or fallen, not quite mature.

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Muscadine grapes will soon turn dark purple as they ripen. These grow near the back door, in easy reach.

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Green figs ripen high in the branches of our fig tree and swelling fox grapes hang in curtains from their vines stretching across the canopy.  It is that time of year when golden Black-eyed Susans finally open and tight buds swell atop stalks of butterfly ginger lilies.  The perennial Begonias have finally bloomed, and branches of beautyberry are thick with tiny green fruits.  In another few weeks they will ripen to brilliant purple before they, too, disappear to feed the animals who make our garden their home.

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Butterfly Ginger Lily will begin its season of bloom this week.

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For as everything ripens, so it also will fade in time.   The first hints of autumn have already brought a scarlet tinge to the dogwood leaves.  Collapsed Hibiscus flowers lie crumpled on the ground.  moonflowers bloom for a night, filling the patio with radiant white flowers and their intoxicating perfume.  By noon of the following day they have finished.   Time measures the rhythm of each growing thing in the garden, just as time measures our rhythms, too.

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Abundant rain has made this a good growing season here in Coastal Virginia.  Leaves are large and lush.  Japanese stilt grass fills in any space not cultivated, mown or mulched with its exotic, bamboo like leaves.  I was wandering through the paths today and discovered a rare surprise:  nature sown ferns.  There in the path, arising from a clump of moss, was a perfect little fern I never planted.  What a gift; what a little miracle of chance and opportunity and exuberance.  Later, camera in hand, I found some more.  I wonder now how many more little ferns may be growing in hidden, moist places, growing in their own rhythms from spore to frond.

This week the garden has grown nearly to its peak of lushness.  Paths have closed as plants reach from one side to the other to touch one another, and perhaps to soak in a bit more sunlight.  Late summer flowers come into bloom, vines stretch themselves ever further, some sprouting new leaves to replace ones lost in July.  Cuttings root, buds form and shrubs expand.  Goldfinches harvest seeds from faded flowers even as fallen leaves litter the street.

Every ending balances a beginning.  Time’s pendulum swings in a never ending cadence, marking nature’s pulse.  After long years we finally feel it and harmonize to its beat, at long last learning to see each moment as fully perfect and perfectly ripe.

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Moonflowers, Ipomoea alba

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Woodland Gnome 2020

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Beautyberry, Callicarpa hybrid

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Visit Illuminations, for a daily quotation and a photo of something beautiful.

Many thanks to the wonderful ‘Six on Saturday’ meme sponsored by The Propagator

Chocolate Vine

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Do you plant vines in your garden?

I planted this chocolate vine, Akebia quinata, on a whim about four years ago.  It was one of those unusual plants in the winter catalogs which caught my eye, and so I ordered one.  It is one of the many flowers blooming in our garden this week.

Native to Japan, Korea, and China, this useful vine was smuggled out of China in 1845 by Scotsman Robert Fortune, who brought it to Britain.  Akebia quinata, so named because each leaf has five sections, was brought on to the United States some time after that.

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Does Fortune’s name sound familiar?  He is famous for smuggling plants out of China and back to Britain.  He brought the first tea plants, and knowledge of how to cultivate them, out of China and to India in 1848, on behalf of the British East India Company.    He was responsible for the tea industry in India, where tea had not previously grown.

The Akebia quinata vine has been planted enough now in the United States that it has naturalized along the East coast and as far west as Oregon.

Each vine, which may grow to 40 feet, bears both male and female flowers. The female flowers will often form sweet fruits in autumn.  I say ‘often’ because our vine hasn’t yet borne fruit.  Not only are the fruits a sweet treat, but the woody vine may be used medicinally.  The leaves of this vine are sometimes used as a tea substitute, and the new tender growth of the vines may be eaten.

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The larger flowers are female, and may eventually form fruits in late September and October. The smaller flowers contain the pollen. Some catalogs specify that two vines are needed for fruit production, and we have only one.

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Some smell a chocolate fragrance in the vine’s flowers.  Others identify the fragrance as more like allspice, or lilac.  It may also be called a ‘chocolate vine’ because the flowers are such a dark and dusky purple color in some cultivars.  The fruit, which is also purpley brown, may be eaten raw or cooked.

The husk of the fruit may be stuffed and fried.  The fruit is high in both protein and Vitamin C.  The seeds are about a third oil, and the oil is rendered in Asia for making soap and for cooking.  The vines may be woven into baskets.

These vines may be grown on a trellis, up into a tree, or allowed to scamper as an attractive ground cover.

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This plant was unknown to me when I ordered it, but I enjoy it in the garden.  It grows as a hardy woody perennial, hardy in zones 4-8, and keeps a few of its leaves each winter.  It has gotten scant attention beyond a little training and a dusting of Rose Tone each year.  It shares its trellis with roses, and so benefits whenever I feed them.

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I enjoy it for its spring flowers, its beautiful vines, and for the spectacle it has made in this part of the garden.  It has long since left its trellis to scamper up into nearby trees.  Now it is also branching out at the base and scrambling over the ground, which is fine.  It has never been grazed by deer or rabbits in our garden. Although it can grow in full sun, it prefers partial shade and moist soil.

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Some areas consider this beautiful and useful Akebia quinata an invasive plant.  It isn’t considered invasive in Virginia, and in fact, I don’t recall ever seeing it growing here wild.  If you have been looking at it in the winter catalogs, and considering whether to buy it, it might be worth the money.  As with many plants which can grow quite large, you need either the space to let it have its way, or you need to stay after it with the pruners.

It is still cultivated in Asia as a food crop, for its fruits, seeds, and tender new growth.   When a plant is beautiful, edible, hardy and easy to grow; it gets high marks from me.

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Woodland Gnome 2015

 

Serendipity

A Passionflower nodding out of a peach tree?

 

How could that be?

 

A wider perspective

What an amazing vine, and what a beautiful surprise so late in the season.  Passiflora incarnata is naturalized all over the southeastern United States.   This perennial vine has had a phenomenal season, growing many many feet to first cover the deer fence, and now climb the peach tree. 

 

The plant, dried, has been used to make tea.  It has a calming effect and can help treat insomnia. 

Native Americans and early settlers ate the fruit out of hand as you might an apple.  The fruit is still enjoyed today.  It is sometimes made into juice, and that juice can be cooked into jam and jelly.  Mostly, its flower brings a smile with its wild form and bright colors.  Especially when its found peeking out of a peach tree. 

 

A serendipity:  A happy, unexpected surprise.

All photos by Woodland Gnome 2013

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