I have never entered a shoe-buying, jeans-bingeing, on-line procuring fugue state, where I’m surprised later by my acquisitions. I did, however, worry last week that I’d gone around the bend with the on-line plant purchasing when a large Izel box arrived that I didn’t remember ordering. It was full of stonecrop–fifty plugs of stonecrop, to be precise. What had I done? Was a time traveler controlling my terraforming efforts? More importantly, what the heck was stonecrop?
My first thought was that February is a dark and dreary month for gardeners. (True, I pulled many highly visible invasives in February, but you don’t get to plant anything.) I did place a few February orders from places like Direct Native Plants and Izel Plants for April shipping. But when those boxes arrived I remembered their contents. What the heck was stonecrop?
It sounded like something from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives–you know his series with the stony world, where the grasses pull into the ground when the winds blow? With the rockbud plants? Had February Laura decided that stonecrop sounded like rockbud and it would be cool to have a lot of that? Was she nuts? Again, what the heck was stonecrop?
I do not live on Sanderson’s storm ravaged planet. I’m in Maryland. (By the way, Sanderson describes all sorts of stony, rocky plants in his Stormlight Archives. They have names like rockbud, so I keep picturing plants made of rocks. Or something like sandcastles, when the sand is still wet and can make cool crenelated rivulets on the turrets. Does anyone else see a green world when reading his books? I’m fascinated by the effects of his language choices.) Maryland is pretty verdant.
Anyway, when my box arrived I started looking up stonecrop. The obvious and pernicious influence of Brandon Sanderson notwithstanding, I had to figure that I’d known something about it when I bought it.
Turns out February Laura–aka “the time traveller,” but from the past–was not totally beguiled by the imaginary rockbud. It’s a native groundcover, about 6 inches tall with little white flowers. According to the packing slip, stonecrop blooms April, May, and June. That’s a pretty long bloom time. Yay, me. Leopold’s Native Plants of the Northeast puts them on his list for plants that are good with dry soil. That matches up with Sanderson’s saga, and is good for Maryland, too, because we can have dry summers. But! Get this. It’s also good with moist soil. And shade! I have lots of shade, and since I had 50 plugs I put a dozen of them into the deepest, darkest Back Forty to see how they do under the dense canopy of the tulip trees. And, and, and, stonecrop is on the list for plants with high-quality nectar for butterflies and hummingbirds. What could be better? Also, some places describe it as evergreen, which makes it even more glorious. Am I happy with February Laura? Yes, yes I am. She was a genius.
Why am I disassociating myself like this? I don’t know, but if you’ve read the Stormlight Archives you’ll feel worried for me.
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