Moon Carrots--Underused Plants

The moon carrot, Seseli gummiferum, originates from Crimea and can reach 4 ft. tall.  As is typical with biennials (plants that complete their life cycle in two years), the plant remains in a basal rosette the first year. The second year a thick flower stalk arises bearing many white flowers clustered in large, flat umbels. Blooms are continuous and generous from midsummer through fall. The moon carrot can grow in full sun to part shade and prefers moderate to xeric watering conditions. If you allow the seed heads to ripen and fall, you will have many new plants in the garden in years to follow.

Growing an Ozone Garden--School Garden

Growing an ozone sensitive garden for a school science program would be an amazing way to incorporate visual results to a real world problem.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has created an ozone monitoring garden that a school program could replicate with plants suitable to their gardening zone.
"The ozone monitoring garden is full of plants that scientists have found to be ozone-sensitive. When exposed to high levels of ozone, each of these plants shows damage on their leaves. Older leaves have the most damage. Plants with ozone damage have very fine colored spots on the upper surfaces of their leaves, and some leaves also turn yellow. Ozone sensitive plants growing in the garden include cutleaf coneflower, cardinal flower, flowering dogwood, and black-eyed susan. All of these species are fairly common and easy to grow, so can serve well for educational gardens.
Students, teachers, and public visitors to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center can learn and teach about atmospheric chemistry and public health with the garden, and can learn about setting up their own ozone monitoring programs."

Here is the link to their site: http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/ozonegarden.html

The National Park Service has a list of plants that are sensitive to ozone.  According to the site species considered sensitive are those that typically exhibit foliar injury at or near ambient ozone concentrations in fumigation chambers and/or are species for which ozone foliar injury symptoms in the field have been documented by more than one observer.
Bioindicator species for ozone injury meet all or most of the following criteria:

• species exhibit foliar symptoms in the field at ambient ozone concentrations that can be easily recognized as ozone injury by subject matter experts
• species ozone sensitivity has been confirmed at realistic ozone concentrations in exposure chambers
• species are widely distributed regionally
• species are easily identified in the field

http://www2.nature.nps.gov/air/Pubs/bioindicators/index.cfm

Bees!

An emerging female mason bee. Female mason bees are black and larger than the males. The males also have a cute, yellow mustache. Mason bees are reported to be better pollinators than the honey bee.

 

Hunt's Bumble Bee  Bombus huntii

What's Blooming Late July

 

               Guara    Gaura lindheimeri

Hidcote Lavender  Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote'  

   

 Mexican Wine Cups    Callirhoe involucrata
 


   Liatris spicata 'Kobold' 


 Ornamental Fountain Grass  Pennisetum orietale