I thought I would give you a look at the plants surrounding the hibiscus and shrimp plants from yesterday’s Bloom Day.
First, I would be grateful if anyone could identify the tropical plant with the very large leaves in the center above — and below with clover poking up through the leaves.
When we arrived in Kigali, it was in a big pot on an upstairs porch, where I felt it was not getting the attention it deserved. It was also really in the way — it’s over 4′ across.
On its left above and in the photo below is a large burgundy-colored succulent — sedum? kalanchoe? — which I also haven’t yet identified. Does anyone recognize it Euphorbia grantii (aka Synadenium grantii), possibly the Rubra variety. It’s also called African milk bush and is native to East Africa.
[Thanks to Alison in Australia, who wrote me with the I.D. in November 2014.]
This one is about 5′ tall, but I have seen specimens in Rwanda the size of a small tree.
The burgundy leaves (red, green, and pink when the backlit by the sun — above) look good almost everywhere, so I have cuttings spread throughout the garden.
In the picture above, there’s one in the back of a pink section of the long flower border — or it will be pink if the small shrub roses planted there will oblige me by growing and blooming. They are supposed to push up through the beach spiderlilies (Hymenocallis littoralis).
Below is one of two original plants that were here when we moved in.
In the same planting bed with my two mystery plants are burgundy cannas, variegated liriope, yellow daylilies, and some lamb’s ear that I grew from seed from my parent’s garden in Virginia.
At the ends are shrimp plants, “Fairy” roses, a caladium, and a small cycad (not in the picture).
This planting bed is on the right in the photo below.
I also wanted to show you one of the common mulleins (Verbascum thepus) that I grew from seed taken from my parent’s garden last year.
This one (located not very artistically in the vegetable garden) is 3′ across. The other plants are only 12″.
The plant is something of a roadside weed in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., but it can send up a yellow flower stalk to 10′ tall. The garden writer, Henry Mitchell* liked tall mulleins so much that he wrote, “O for a lute of fire to sing their merits.”
Thanks to Pam at Digging for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up the 16th of every month.
enclos*ure 