🌿 LOVE-IN-A-MIST 🌿

Nigella damascena
delicate looking but hardy enough
for growing on Shaw Island.

Botanical Name: Nigella damascena
Common Name: Love-in-a-mist
Life cycle: Hardy annual.
Native Growing Region: Southern Europe and northern Africa.
Zone: 4-8.
Height: 12"-24"
Bloom time: mid-summer. 
Maintenance: Low.
Water: when dry and fertilize monthly.
Flower: Showy flowers open pale but mature to an intense pure shade of sky-blue such as we all find irresistible. Self-sowing but not a thug. Deadheading spent flowers will extend the bloom period, but will also prevent the development of attractive post-bloom seed pods.
Cut flowers in the morning to minimize water loss. 
Culture: Should be sown directly by broadcasting seed in the autumn or spring. Resents transplanting.
Days to Sprouting: 10-15.
Uses: Mixed borders, cottage gardens, cut flowers, dried fruits, bedding, and containers. Stems with dried capsules make excellent additions to dried flower arrangements.

Notes: A popular cool weather annual. Flowers are followed by pine green, globular seed pods that have reddish-brown markings. They like full sun to part shade and ordinary garden soil with excellent drainage. The drying seed capsules can be viewed here

Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, B.C:
"A favorite of Victorian gardeners, adds a delicate touch to almost any planting scheme. Seeds of Nigella damascena are NOT edible. The edible Nigella seeds are Nigella sativa."

      Here's a passage from An Island Garden by American author and poet Celia Thaxter (1835-1894). They wrote primarily about the Isles of Shoals, a group of nine small islands located ten miles off the coast of Portsmouth, N.H. Her family operated a large resort hotel on Appledore Island and Celia's presence helped to attract many of the leading artists, musicians, and authors of the day. Celia devoted uncounted hours to her spectacular flower garden. 

"I hold a flower of the pretty Love-in-a-Mist, the quaint Nigella, and scan its charming face. It blossoms late and long and is a flower of most distinguished beauty. It is star-shaped, in tints of white, blue, and purple, with full rich stamens and anthers of warmer red-purple, the petals on the back delicately veined in each variety with fine lines of faint green. The rich luster of stamens is surrounded at the base by eight smaller inner petals in different tints, so wonderful in detail, so ornate in decoration as to be simply indescribable. Each large outer petal is curved and cup-shaped, yet each has its finishing point that makes the blossom starry, and these eight inner petals radiate from the center within, above the larger ones. The foliage, whence it gets its old-time name, Love-in-a-mist, is like a soft green vapor, and in the double varieties, runs up and mixes itself with the petals. The single varieties are much the finest. They have a faint perfume of anise, and they are among the quaintest and most interesting flowers I know."

(Nigella damascene)
Seed packets usually for sale at the
Shaw Island Gatehouse,
Reefnet Bay Road, Shaw Island, WA.

🌿 BLUE SAILORS 🌿 Local Roadside Wildflower Seeds

"Blue Sailors"
(Cichorium intybus) 
A resident of Shaw Island roadsides.

Common Name: Blue Sailors

Life Style: Hardy, perennial herb.

Native Growing Region: Europe and the Near East. Common on roadsides in the San Juan Islands.

Flower: fine sky blue, July to October. "This may be the only plant of our area that can be instantly recognized by color alone." (Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest from Alaska to Northern California by Lewis J. Clark.)

Tolerates: Drought. Deer.

Description: Can reach 3' to 5' if growing in an area not mowed by roadside work crews.

Soil: Light, preferably alkaline. Sunny and open.

Uses: Can be grown for culinary purposes and for a nutritious pasture and fodder for animals. Dried petals are used for potpourri. Buds can be pickled. This European immigrant has been cultivated for many years, both for its leaves and roots. The roots are sliced, roasted, and ground as an additive to coffee. Europeans familiar from an early age with chicory-flavored coffee consider as improvements the added color, bitterness, and body. 

Chicory is often grown in floral clocks for the regular opening of its flowers and their closing five hours later. These opening times relate to latitude, but the leaves always align with the north. Gardeners interested in metaphysics credit this plant with life-giving forces.

This plant is mentioned by Scott Atkinson and drawn by Fred Sharpe in their wonderful Wild Plants of the San Juan Islands. 

Notes: great data listed here

"Wild chicory"
A.K.A. "Blue Sailors"
Seed packets are available at the
Shaw Island Gatehouse,
Squaw Bay Road, 
Shaw Island, WA.

🌿 CAMAS 🌿 (CAMASSIA quamash)

Camas
(Camassia quamash) 
This photo was taken on Yellow Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
A nature preserve.

Common name: Camas

Life cycle: Hardy Bulb.

Growing region: Zones 4 to 9.

Height: 12-24 inches.

Flowers: Late spring.

Bloom Description: blue-violet (rarely white.) Showy; April-June. 

Habitat: moist soils, at least in early spring, prairies; meadows; grassy flats. Occurs on both sides of the Cascades. 

Tolerates: Summer drought.

Notes: 
Camassia species deserve wider use in perennial gardens or for naturalizing in woodland settings. They are used more extensively in Europe than in the USA, where they are native.  These long-lived bulbs are easy to establish.
The bulbs were an important food for Native Americans, and territorial battles were fought over quamash fields. The Lewis and Clark expedition also depended on boiled bulbs for food during their journey west. 
There are six species of Camassia native to N. America. There are two species native to the San Juans. 

June 1806 Meriwether Lewis came down into the Nisqually prairie and said these famous words:

"The quamash is now in blume and from the colour of its bloom at a short distance it resembles lakes of fine clear water, so completely in this deception that on first sight I could have sworn that it was water!"

One of my favourite reference books for researching this specimen, partly because the author took space to include the well-known Lewis quote, in her fine book:

A Christmas 2014 gift book
from dear friends.
Only available from within
Northwest Indian communities
Published by The Northwest Indian College
Vanessa Cooper-360-392-4343.

the North American Native Plant Society has good notes here.

Camassia quamash
seed packet
Available at the Shaw Island
Gatehouse seed shed
Reefnet Bay Road,
Shaw Island, WA.