If you have ever spotted a sculptural, silver-blue tree standing alone in a dry garden — its trunk wrapped in a skirt of golden straw and its crown exploding in sharp, fine-tipped leaves — you were almost certainly looking at Yucca rostrata. I remember the first time I saw one in a southwestern landscape. It…
There are flowers that demand attention, careful soil preparation, and constant vigilance. And then there is the cosmos flower — a plant that practically grows itself, asks for very little, and rewards you with months of delicate, feathery blooms that look like they belong in a painting. I have grown many flowers over the years,…
The fuchsia flower is one of those plants that seems almost too beautiful to be real. Its pendulous blooms — with their layered petals, contrasting colours, and long, graceful stamens — look as though a jeweller, not nature, designed them. Fuchsia belongs to the genus Fuchsia, which contains over 110 recognised species and thousands of…
Few flowers make as strong a first impression as the gerbera daisy. Walk into any florist shop, and chances are you will spot its bold, symmetrical blooms standing tall in the display. It is vivid. It is cheerful. And it is surprisingly versatile. I remember the first time I saw a field of gerberas in…
Brazilian jasmine is one of those plants that makes people stop and stare. It produces bold, trumpet-shaped blooms in vivid shades of pink, red, and white — sometimes all at once — against a backdrop of deep, glossy green leaves. Despite its name, Brazilian jasmine is not a true jasmine. It belongs to the genus…
Pick up an acorn from the ground and hold it in your palm. It is small — sometimes no bigger than a grape. It is hard, smooth, and capped with a textured little hat that fits just right. Now consider this: that tiny object is capable of growing into a tree that will live for…
The longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and the loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) are arguably the two most culturally and ecologically significant conifers in the southeastern United States. Yet most people treat them as interchangeable. They are not. One built the South. The other is rebuilding it — though in very different ways. This guide will walk…
If you have ever walked through a Sierra Nevada forest and looked up to see a towering pine with impossibly long cones hanging from its highest branches like ornaments, you were almost certainly standing beneath a sugar pine. The sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana) is the tallest and largest pine tree species in the world. It…
If you have ever driven through the American South, you have seen loblolly pine. It lines highways, fills plantation forests, and edges small towns from Virginia to east Texas. It is, in many ways, the tree that built the modern American timber economy. The loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) is the most commercially important tree in…
When people think of willows, the graceful, drooping weeping willow often comes to mind first. But the black willow (Salix nigra) is the true workhorse of North American wetlands — and arguably the more important tree. It is the largest native willow species on the continent, and it has been doing critical ecological work long…