One Plant at a Time: Pacific Coast Hybrid Iris

Today's plant is a pacific coast hybrid iris. This is the first one to bloom for me this year. The PCH collection is a grand varicolored array of irises bred from several California and Oregon native species. They are quite a bit shorter and smaller than most garden irises, being 10 to 15 inches tall, and earlier blooming. I have collected several, but killed some, and most have not bloomed yet. This one seems to get its color primarily from the golden iris, I. innominata, which I have never seen in the wild, and its form from the Oregon iris, I. tenax, which, being blue, I probably never distinguished from any other small blue iris, calling them all Douglas iris, often incorrectly.

Iris tenax was an important source of raw material for netmaking and basketry for the west coast indigenous people. I was taught that only the one middle fiber from each leaf was used. Since I don't need dependable nets for fishing, that is too labor-intensive for me, so I have not used leaves of native iris in my basketry. I guess I could try the whole leaves of all the native irises, since my needs are not so stringent.

Its roots, and those of most small north american iris, are toxic and medicinally equivalent to I. missouriensis, which was traditionally used for toothache and a number of other things. I have no direct experience with it.

One Plant at a Time: Lime Tree

Today's plant is the lime tree. Now of course that could mean two things. In the cooler parts of the English speaking world, the lime tree that will grow is what I call a linden, Tilia species, with their grand stature and splendidly fragrant flowers. But here in zone 10, the lime is Citrus x latifolia, the Bearss lime or Persian lime, with its seedless yellow fruits.

Yes, yellow. Limes are sold green so customers can easily tell them from lemons. When you grow them at home they ripen to a lovely, slightly paler than lemon, yellow, before getting so mature they fall off the tree. Once you are accustomed to distinguishing them, limes stand out in yards all over town. I always wonder whether the people who pick my limes expect lemons and are surprised when they slice them and find pale green pulp. The lime is my most prolific citrus, even though it gets the least sun of all of them.

I chose limes today because I am going to make another batch of marmalade. Limes are what I have in abundance, and I hate to waste them. The passersby don't take them all. Whether I prefer the flavor of lemon or lime depends on which I am eating at that moment. The primary drawback of limes for marmalade is that the skin is thin and gets tough when cooked with sugar, even if I cook it until it is seriously soft before adding the sugar. I am going to try almost puréeing the peels and see how it is with a smoother texture and no pieces of peel big enough to be leathery.

I also chose limes because many of the photos I took yesterday of other plants did not come out well. In this photo you can see the leaves, a ripe lime, lime blossoms, and the tiny fruits that will be next year's lime crop.

The common Persian or Tahitian lime like almost all our citrus fruits is a hybrids of hybrids, in this case probably key lime and lemon, both themselves crosses. Extremely rarely it has viable seeds which, being monoembryonic (rather than nucellar like much citrus) don't breed true, and sterile pollen. It comes from neither Persia nor Tahiti, but somewhere in tropical or subtropical Asia. It arrived in Europe via the Silk Road, and thus was thought of as Persian. It arrived in California from Australia via Tahiti in the 19th century.

One Plant at a Time: Three-cornered Leek

Today's plant is the three-cornered leek. Most people call these "wild onion", but there are so many wild onions, both native and feral, that I prefer a more specific name. This is another plant that's entirely edible, but I'm not entirely happy about having it in my yard. I was first introduced to eating this plant when I went into the kitchen one day and found my then three-year-old daughter standing on a chair at the stove, cooking some in a frying pan for me.

Three-cornered leek, allium triquetrum, is easily recognized in flower by the shape of its flower stem, which is triangular in cross section.  Like so many of our edibles, it's native to the mediterranean.

It's a pretty plant. It's convenient to be able to go into the yard and get fresh scallions when I want them. If I can keep it down to a few patches, I will be happy to have it. But it carpets the entire yard, and stinks when I step in it, which is any time I walk around. I hate the smell of raw onion; it gives me a headache. So to be able to walk through the yard and lie in the hammock without being immersed in onion fumes would be a real improvement. I am making some progress in diminishing the clumps, but it spreads very readily.

It's a wet season plant, as all of my edible weeds are. When the ground is wet it's easy to pull up the plants whole by the clump, leaves and bulbs together. Once the ground starts to dry you just get the leaves, and the bulbs stay put to sprout up again next fall, defeating my purpose. The bulbs are too small when dry to bother digging up for cooking, though sometimes you come upon a sort of nest of them, and can just pick up a handful from the dry ground, which makes it easier.

Even though I pull them up by big bunches I still don't generally bother cooking them. The greens cook down and almost disappear in most dishes. The bulbs are small, and fiddly to get the mud off. They have a mealy texture when cooked, especially when dry and dormant, that doesn't compare well with the nice juiciness of sautéed grocery store onions. They will certainly do in a pinch, though, if I'm out of onions. I know people who love them. As I mentioned, the leaves make a good green onion.

What I like best, for ease of harvest and cooking, as an attractive garnish, and to discourage the spread of the plants, is to pick the flower clusters off the tops of the stems. When the flowers are mature they have bulblets in the middle that are all set to sprout and grow as soon as they fall on the ground. Not only are they unavailable to set more onion plants if they have been harvested, the bulblets make nice little green bubbly bites in whatever you use them in. The young flowers don't have the little round lumpy things, so they are less satisfying to cook with, though they are pretty on a salad if you don't hate raw onion as I do.

One Plant at a Time: Alexanders

Today's plant is alexanders. That's the singular. Alexanders, smyrnium olastrum, is a mediterranean plant that was eaten historically in Europe. It fell out of use after the middle ages as celery became a widely eaten food rather than just medicine and fodder. In my garden, alexanders is naturalized. It holds its own against sour grass and will gradually crowd or shade it out, which is reason enough for me to love it.

Alexanders is in the apiaceae, formerly the umbelliferae, the carrot family, which has many plants of significance to humans as food, medicine, and poison, such as parsley, lomatium, lovage, water hemlock, parsnip, fennel, and asafoetida. It has a peculiar taste which may not immediately appeal, not as pleasant as celery, but I can't grow celery. In fact, I can barely grow any vegetables at all, but alexanders thrives untended in my yard and gives me greens for many a meal in the late winter and early spring. Plus, it grows in part shade, which is my yard's version of sunny.

I eat the flower stalks of the second-year plants. They are succulent. The leaves are too bitter for me, though the whole plant is edible. If I see them in time, I pick the stalk as soon the flower buds emerge from the carpet of leaves. You don't really have to be that prompt; if the weather is mild they are still good after the flower opons, so you can let a few more mature if you want to have a meal's worth. I cut them as low as possible, remove the leaves and petioles, and chop the stems into short chunks or long spears. It seems there is a lot of waste, but that's compared to commercial vegetables pre-trimmed on the farm. While chopping I evaluate how much is tender enough to eat, and reject any length that is too tough to slice easily. The buds and young flowers are also tasty, including the little leaves that enfold them, less bitter than the main leaves, and they fill out the meal a little. I generally sauté or steam the stems and the flowers. Often I add them to my Sunday breakfast of eggs and weeds. The plant continues to grow and send up more shoots, though skinnier and less worthwhile for cooking. And besides you might want seeds.

When they first are ready I eat them daily for a short while, then back off to once or twice a week, as the flavor is so distinctive as to be tiresome too often. You can eat it raw, but my habit is to cook everything.

One Plant at a Time: Sweet Flag

People often ask me how I know so much about plants. There's so much I don't know that I discount the question, but the actual answer is I learn one plant at a time. I've had a lot of time. We are currently quarantined for the coronavirus, and I have been inspired to write about the plants in my garden. So I will do it one plant at a time.

Today's plant is sweet flag, acorus calamus. Not to be confused with sweet grass, hierochloe odorata, which I have tried to establish and there may be a little plant somewhere, hidden in the weeds, but I haven't seen it in a long time. Anyway, sweet flag. It came to mind because I am trying weave a basket out of its leaves. It is way too brittle to use for the binder, so I am trying it as the core. I am experimenting with different ways of drying and rehydrating it, as it is difficult to work with fresh. I want to use it because it has a curious aroma. Scent is a very important part of baskets for me.

I have a little water garden in a big pot that I have to keep treating against mosquitoes, because sweet flag prefers to grow with wet feet, and my garden is very dry eight months of the year. I have also tried transplanting it out and it seems to be surviving in one place that's a little soggy sometimes. My water garden was getting crowded so I transplanted several roots of it into the catchment basin down at the corner for the water that runs down the gutter. It's often wet there, and there are a few cultivated plants among the weeds, so I thought it might improve the diversity there. But as soon as I planted it we had an absolutely dry month in the middle of the rainy season, so nothing I planted took. I carried gallons of water down the block and looked foolish watering the weed patch, but to no avail.

Speaking of roots, the root is used medicinally and as a flavoring. Sucking on a bit of the dry root will stop hiccoughs and allay heartburn. I can't use it because I leave it in my mouth too long and it burns my mouth so badly that the buccal mucosa are sore for days. However I have made both bitters and a tincture out of it that work for me. I rather like the fresh-plant tincture. Others report that the tincture is too awful to imbibe and they prefer the root. I don't think the bitters I made would improve gin, but maybe they'd be good in brandy. I just use them as an aperitif.

Sweet flag is a circumpolar species, though the eurasian variety is triploid and the american is diploid. Reputedly the diploid plant lacks the carcinogenic component of the triploid variety. I can't imagine anyone imbibing enough calamus to be affected by the carcinogen, but many people are more careful than I am. Anyway, when I bought it I obtained a reputedly american individual from a reputable herbalist. So I don't worry about it.

Now where's my camera?