{"id":1320,"date":"2012-04-05T15:38:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T19:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2012-04-05T15:38:43","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T19:38:43","slug":"lowly-lovely-cinquefoil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/2012\/04\/lowly-lovely-cinquefoil\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowly, lovely cinquefoil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Ken Moore<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Flora columnist <\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is so interesting to watch the unfolding of the new landscape slowly emerging around the N.C. Botanical Garden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new building complex. While I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard comments that the new gardens are taking too long to create, I commend the Garden staff for being so thoughtful and not rushing into what will be a most engaging and instructional future garden. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the old gardens surrounding the Totten Center are mature and absolutely exploding with horticultural beauty and botanical interest. The sweeps of golden ragwort and blue phlox in the shade garden are breathtaking, and watching children discovering the emerging flowers and leaves in the carnivorous plant beds is a joy to behold.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24876\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?attachment_id=24876\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-24876\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24876\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/cinquefoil-leaf-and-flower_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"cinquefoil-leaf-and-flower_web\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24876\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-24876\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bright-yellow flowers add sparkle to the five parted leaves of cinquefoil in spring and later in the summer. Photo by Ken Moore<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It is noteworthy that specimens showing up in the new gardens represent the diversity of plants that occur naturally all around us in the Carolina Piedmont. <\/p>\n<p>Most of those plants result from the Garden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s active propagation program. Planning ahead, keen staff members carefully collected seed of dozens of local Piedmont species, and now there are lots of plants for display and testing. Some of them will become choice garden plants, some may become a future Wildflower of the Year and some few may become select cultivars. We all love those fancy-named cultivars like goldenrod, <em>Solidago rugosa<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fireworks,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and wild indigo, <em>Baptisia<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Carolina Moonlight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d both special selections from the Garden. <\/p>\n<p>One of my favorites is a plant rescued years ago from a residential construction site. It has proven to be a dependable, low groundcover that thrives in heat, drought, sun and shade. Common cinquefoil (meaning five fingers, referring to the five leaf segments), <em>Potentilla simplex<\/em>, serves as a well-behaved living green mulch supporting other perennials in the garden. <\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24875\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?attachment_id=24875\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-24875\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24875\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/cinquefoil-green-mulch_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"cinquefoil-green-mulch_web\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24875\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-24875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Trailing cinquefoil forms a living green mulch protecting other perennials in the garden. Photo by Ken Moore<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In<em> The Secrets of Wildflowers<\/em> by Jack Sanders, longtime Connecticut resident and newspaper editor, the author seems as enthusiastic as I am about cinquefoils. He describes cinquefoils as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a rose by another name.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>I wholeheartedly agree with him that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cinquefoils are lowly but lovely flowers. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 These dry-earth cinquefoils are nature\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way of covering, even decorating, the more barren parts of our landscape. Like cacti, they spring from harsh, barren soils. As we allow more of the good topsoil to be eroded or scraped away, the cinquefoils are bound to become even more common. They are among those opportunistic creatures of nature that thrive on our inability to handle our environment carefully.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Enough said \u00e2\u20ac\u201c go search out the several areas in the new gardens where keen curators, particularly Chris Liloia and Sally Heiney, are encouraging and planting this lowly, lovely native groundcover.<\/p>\n<p>Jack Sanders is also a poet, and I have to share his poem about cinquefoils:<br \/>\n<em>Mysteries<br \/>\nThe lowly cinquefoil is a rose.<br \/>\nA fact that any botanist knows.<br \/>\nThough it seems to me a mystery<br \/>\nHow such a lowly plant can be<br \/>\nSibling to a flower that grows<br \/>\nAs glorious as a garden rose.<br \/>\nThe bigger question does remain:<br \/>\nHow you pronounce that funny name?<br \/>\nDoes it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsink\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or does it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<br \/>\nAs it wanders up the bank?<br \/>\nAnd as it creeps across the soil<br \/>\nWhat, pray tell, does it foil?<\/em><br \/>\nHow I wish I had composed that!<\/p>\n<p><em>Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com. Find previous Ken Moore Citizen columns at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/\">The Annotated Flora<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ken Moore Flora columnist It is so interesting to watch the unfolding of the new landscape slowly emerging around the N.C. Botanical Garden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new building complex. While I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard comments that the new gardens are taking too long to create, I commend the Garden staff for being so thoughtful and not rushing into what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[720,925,927,924,928,926],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-moores-flora","category-spring","tag-baptisia","tag-cinquefoil","tag-phlox","tag-potentilla-simplex","tag-ragwort","tag-solidago-rugosa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1324,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}