Crazy Cabbages of California – Strange and Beautiful Natives
It’s a Cabbagey time of year, but not in the way you might expect! Though I do have a soft spot for sauerkraut and odd ornamental kales (last year we celebrated “Take Your Cabbage to Work Day” and a magnificent head of ‘Filderkraut’ attended our staff meeting), I mean instead to wax ecstatic on the wild, NATIVE cousins of our vegetable friends.
Caulanthus inflatus doing it's thing. Eventually the stem will puff up like a smallish banana!
May we introduce Caulanthus inflatus “Desert Candle?” It’s the only annual I can think of that’s grown for its STEM, which is curiously inflated and bright yellow. At the former Richmond nursery, we could grow this bizarrity only during the first few months of the year; after real sunshine began to hit our part of the world, up, up it went, like a banana that had been bred with a balloon, and the seasonal offering ended. So sad! So seasonal! If I could grow this annual year round, I would, but it doesn’t grow that way. As the common name suggests, it’s on loan to us from more arid parts of the state and it’s biological clock tells it to bloom like there’s NO TOMORROW before the scorching sets in.
Given a milder climate, luxurious soil and more ample agua, some desert wildflowers carry on for much much longer than they would in the wilds, but Caulanthus inflatus keeps the window tight. For gardeners who want to grow this truly strange cabbage cousin, the seasonal window is tight: plant it early enough to establish before hot weather arrives.
Another of our native cabbages that looks more extraterrestrial than local is Streptanthus farnsworthianus. Subtle in color, but so strange in form! The appeal is not so much the flowers, but the foliage, which starts as a tuft of ferny green and elongates and ages as the plant comes into bloom into strange winged purple forms with a pearlescent sheen. It’s very hard to capture and document properly and even our best photos seem to miss the whimsy and oddity of the plant. You must grow it and see for yourself!
Strange and pretty CA native Streptanthus farnsworthianus has purple papery wings that outshine the flowers.
Last and hardly least comes Thysanocarpus radians, whose delicate stems carry some of the prettiest seeds I’ve ever seen. Held many to a stem, they look very much like elegant jewelry. A translucent wing surrounds each seed and if you’re careful with your meadow maintenance (manage weeds and slugs as needed; if using Sluggo or another bait, choose a product labeled for the site and pest and follow all label directions and precautions) you can get a little patch going that will reseed and return every year! At the former nursery, this was another plant that could not be offered late in the season.
Here were a few other colorful cabbages of note at the former Richmond nursery:
Lunaria annua ‘Rosemary Verey’ – Heirloom and exclusive! Also the most decadent “Money Plant” around.
Heliophila longifolia – Airy, barely there foliage builds into a frothy bouquet of beautiful blue.
Streptanthus albidus peramoena “Most Beautiful Jewel Flower” – Lovely, showy, ENDANGERED. What more can be said?
Erysimum capitatum ssp. capitatum – This orange-flowered California native was new to Annie’s former Richmond nursery when the article was written, and I was excited to offer it at the time.
