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You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: What’s This Plant?

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: What’s This Plant?

by | 84 Comments

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Unidentified Leafy Object

From commentor Smedley the Uncertain:

Can you identify this plant? I lost the name tag. I want to know how to over winter them here in Western NY. They are thriving in pots all about the garden.

Nasturtiums
Some serendipitous beauty from commentor Jeff G:

I found this vase in a drawer I haven’t opened in a while. Picked a few nasturtiums from the bedraggled plant I was about to pull out. Put them in it. Didn’t arrange them. Yesterday as I sat in the living room the sun came through the windows and hit the vase. This is the picture.

And some bonus uplift, from the Washington Post — “The small city farm: An oasis in food deserts, during the pandemic and beyond”:

… It is amazing how much you can grow in a small space if the soil is good and you stay on top of tasks such as watering and weeding. But even in a pandemic-driven planting year full of homegrown potatoes, beans and carrots, you have to face reality. If you relied on most urban veggie plots alone to feed yourself, never mind a large family, you’d be forever tightening your belt.

This is why I’ve had my doubts about whether urban agriculture can meet the challenge where it is most needed: in poorer, food-insecure neighborhoods.

Rosie Williams is in charge of such a garden, in an expansive side lot of the National Children’s Center, an early-learning and educational development provider in Southeast Washington.

The garden packs a lot in. There are almost 70 raised planter beds, each four by eight feet and filled with deep, rich soil. That’s a lot of growing area; the beds generate bushels of edible plants for most of the year. A shed houses tools, a single beehive is active, a few fruit trees ring the area, and one side is devoted to little benches for little people. The center, which normally houses classes for 188 children up to age 5, has been closed because of the pandemic, though a limited reopening is in the works.

Williams, a teacher and the garden coordinator, shows me cool-season veggies growing in the fall, young plants of kale, collards, cauliflower, broccoli and red cabbage. In other planters, mature plants are seeing out the season in robust vigor. The most obvious is a single pepper plant — now taller than Williams — whose leaves hide unripe green chiles that hang like ornaments. This is a mighty hot pepper from Trinidad named Scorpion, she said, and I have no doubt that it has a sting in its tail.

Elsewhere, wizened sunflowers have had their day. “We bring the kids out, we show them how to plant seeds, what the plants need,” she said. “It’s getting folks exposed to the garden.” Food from the garden is used in the center’s kitchen.

Thus the children (and their families) get a sense that food comes from the soil. This is not so obvious a connection in Ward 8. In this corner of the capital of the United States, there is one full-service grocery store for 80,000 people, and access to something as basic as fresh vegetables is limited…

The Baby Bloomers Urban Farm that Williams coordinates at the National Children’s Center is one of seven in a network of city farms east of the Anacostia River, including a one-acre farm run by Threatt’s organization at THEARC, the arts, education and social services campus at 1901 Mississippi Ave. SE.

This one farm produced as much as 1,600 pounds of food this year, but to provision its CSA program, the Building Bridges group turns to an additional 10 farms within 50 miles of the city, most of them Black-owned, said Scott Kratz, vice president…

I am rethinking my sense that mini-farms in the city are of limited value. They are, rather, a key portal into a larger infrastructure of food-security efforts. Beyond their utility, they are places of deep reconnection, to the soil, to food and to communities. In the food deserts of big-city America, they are the oases.

***********

What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    evap

    I’m not an expert, but it looks like some kind of coleus. If so, it won’t last outside, but I think you can keep it alive inside. Also, I’ve had success rooting coleus.

    If it’s not coleus, never mind!

  2. 2.

    Jeffery

    I agree with evap. It looks like a coleus. If you can bring a pot in put it on a sunny window. It will look very sad by next spring. If it survives the winter once it goes back out it will bounce back fast. Then you can make cutting from it to put around your garden.

  3. 3.

    Platonicspoof

    Can either of the two lower frames of Smedley’s combined image be posted separately for a google image search?
    If these are fall foliage colors, what color is the foliage in summer?
    Do you have a picture of the flowers?
    Herbaceous or at least semi-woody?

    Very colorful, so I expect someone will know off the top of their head.

  4. 4.

    satby

    Ok, that’s three votes for coleus. If you bring them inside because they’re all in pots and put them in a very sunny window (or under grow lights) they’ll last until spring. More info here.

    Beautiful picture of the nasturtiums in the vase!

  7. 7.

    oatler.

    Coleus used to be considered to be a  hallucinogen in the 70s if you ate enough leaves. I’ll testify they didn’t work.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’m going to say not coleus. The leaves are smooth edged, every coleus I’ve ever grown had sawtoothed edged leaves. Also the cluster of leaves at the end of the branch is very un-coleus like.

    I also expect to be proven wrong in 3…2…1…

    ETA: love the nasturtiums in the vase Jeff G. The stems create a very pleasing pattern.

  12. 12.

    Sab

    My husband and I have these “discussions”. Everything I call a perennial he calls a weed. True story : he could not identify “that yellow flower” as a daffodil, so he is not allowed to do much yardwork other than mowing, which he insists on doing .

  13. 13.

    Sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: My college roommate’s parents were overseas Chinese settled in the Phillipines until they moved to Ohio. Her mother thought carefully nurtured  garden coleus plants were hilarious, because in the Phillipines they were a weed.

  14. 14.

    Rihilism

    I use plant identifiers on my phone and computer. Some, like PlantNet (https://identify.plantnet.org/) can identify based on leaf, flower, fruit, bark, other. I find it very useful. It’s free in the app store though you can donate to support them. You do need a clear, single image to identify but you can use multiple images for the attempt.

  15. 15.

    Zinsky

    Thanks again, Anne, for the lovely flower pictures and a nice respite from the hurly-burly of modern American politics.

    Also, thanks for the snippet on urban farming!  I live in the Minneapolis area and there is a very active urban farming and reforestation effort going on here.  Project Sweetie Pie, Family of Trees and other groups are actively reclaiming fallow public land for urban food plots, reforesting denuded urban lots and so on.  It gives inner city residents the means to grow healthy food, reduce fossil fuel emissions, provide a damper on urban heat island effects and helps build citizenship by working on community projects to achieve common goals.  Here is link: https://environmental-initiative-awards.org/winners/2020/critical-collaborator/michael-chaney/

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Sab: I can see why. They self seed rather prolifically and can flat take over a garden if one isn’t quick on the pull of an unwelcome plant.

  19. 19.

    Spanky

    I dunno. Are those Columbine heads at the lower right in the lower right picture? Do Coleus get that big? I need some sense of scale for those pics.

  20. 20.

    evodevo

    @Sab: Yep…the flowers are fascinatingly tiny and bright blue, but will spread all over…

    The coloring of Smedley’s plant resembles coleus, but the leaves don’t look right  – maybe “fireburst”?

  22. 22.

    JR

    I have a paid subscription to “PictureThis” which does a good job at identifying plants (grasses excepted). Says “coleus”, so make that n votes for it.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jeffery: Maybe, tho those leaves appear to be a lot more lobed than the ones above. At the very least, you have shown me a coleus that doesn’t have sawtooth edged leaves, which I am not at all surprised that some breeder somewhere developed. What hath Gregor Mendel wrought with just a few peas?

  29. 29.

    Jeffery

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I have a pot of solid green and a pot of variegated spiders I regrow from babies every spring. A friend of mine lives in Florida and a few years ago wanted to plant spiders outside his house. Couldn’t find any. I mailed babies to him from Philadelphia, Pa.

  31. 31.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @debbie: I’ve tried and killed all of those over the years. The jade got pretty big before it sort of rotted away. Overwatering maybe?

    But now I’m thinking of redeeming myself by trying again as a way of apologizing to the plant gods.

  32. 32.

    jeffreyw

    @oatler.:

    Coleus used to be considered to be a hallucinogen in the 70s if you ate enough leaves. I’ll testify they didn’t work.

    Sounds like you needed more vinegar in the vinaigrette.

  33. 33.

    Gvg

    It is a coleus, and I was going to suggest Rosydawn to look up the variety. I’ve posted it before. Coleus root very easily. I would root a couple of backup plants for the winter. Bring them inside. One plant sometimes dies in spite of care, but if you have several, at least one should make it.

    For anyone admiring something on the rosydawn website, they start selling in spring and sell out every year, so order early.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Yes, I had a jade which someone unfortunately knocked off the table. I have a couple now. I potted up two together because I wasn’t sure it would get large enough in my lifetime; it’s doubled in size in one year and is now too large and heavy to lift. The plant gods can be very fickle.

  35. 35.

    Central Planning

    Since it’s a garden theme, someone took our Biden/Harris plant last night.

    We just ordered two more and will plant them when they arrive.

  36. 36.

    Beth

    Late to the party, but instantly recognized that plant as a coleus. Enjoy your gardens and nature, folks!

    As an old hippie, I grew all the 70s fav houseplants, including a ginormous Boston fern.  I prefer portulacaria to jade plant, as I find the smaller leaves more pleasing. Like jade plants, they prefer less water.  I remember to water the portulacaria  about once a week, maybe, in its sunny outdoors spot. It seems enjoys that schedule.

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m with you Ozark.  Coloring, yes, that looks like coleus.  But the edges of the leaves on coleus, even if not sawtoothed, are typically not smooth, and even the shape of the leaves is not like any coleus I have ever seen.

  39. 39.

    Beth

    Just pointing out that the super-fancy coleus nowadays don’t always have those sawtooth margins.  The ‘fancy feathers’ line of coleus, for example, look fairly smooth.

    Agree this is an interesting conundrum!

  41. 41.

    MazeDancer

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Need to find a good mail order source.

    Me.

    Would be delighted to send you – or anyone – as many young jade and spider plants as you like. (After the election.)

    Alas, my cats like to bat my big jade plants to make the leaves and hanging branches fall. And chew the spiders.

    Have had the offending, but otherwise perfect, kitties two years. There are only so many spots to place plants where they can be protected

    Also, I suffer from the every sperm is sacred approach to the falling leaves and branches. Turn them all into new plants.

    Here are some pics at PostCardPatriots.com

    The 15-year-old big jade is mid-journey from the screened-in porch Summer home to the glassed-in porch Winter home. (It’s heavy.) (And it used to have so many more branches…)

    Plus some of the 8 million little ones about the size of where it started. Can be yours. (Or anyone’s)

    And the culprits.

    Click on “contact” in the menu bar and send me your info if you’re interested.

  42. 42.

    Kristine

    Love the nasturtium photo. Hope you frame and hang it, Jeff G. Very soothing.

    Nights are dipping below 45F here in far NE Illinois, so I am once again planning which plants to bring indoors for the next 6 months and which to leave to Nature. Bonsai ficus and serissa, indoors. The gerbera daisy, which is in its second year. A couple of the small kalanchoe. More than that, and I won’t have room to walk in my dining area, which is the only place in the house with decent sun exposure.

    The fall colors are pretty, but I will miss the flowers.

    Side note: saw my first junco yesterday, which means it’s officially Da Cool.

  43. 43.

    Kay

    It’s driving me crazy because I don’t think it’s a coleus. It’s not just the leaf margins that look wrong- it’s the way the leaves are arranged coming from the stem. Coleus are a nettle so have a square stem and I can’t tell if that plant does or not.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    They’re growing like a frond, not a leaf, is my problem. Coleus just have simple opposite leaves- arranged opposite on the stem.

  46. 46.

    MazeDancer

    @Kay:

    If you slide the group pic off the page, so you can blow it up really big, you can see the stems look square.

    About the opposite leaf growing action, couldn’t say.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: @Kay:

    I noticed that too, about the leaves growing out of the stems in a different way than coleus, but I didn’t know the terminology to describe it.  Glad you do!  That, and the shape of the leaves themselves seems completely different from any coleus I have ever seen.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: That’s the part that really stumps me too. I at least half expected some one to show up with a smooth leafed variety, but that growth pattern is just so foreign to my experience with coleus.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MazeDancer: @Kay:  In trying to see the square stem (I can’t tell from these pics) I noticed something else. All the leaves growing on the lower end of the branch are entirely on the upper side of the stems.

    That is also outside my experience with coleus.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @mrmoshpotato: Heh. My wife’s first experience with stinging nettles was rather entertaining as well. Well, it was entertaining for me anyway. She still blames me too.

    “Why didn’t you warn me????” she screams from the cooling waters of the Current River.
    “Because I didn’t think I needed to!” I replied.

    Doesn’t everyone know about stinging nettles?

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly:  I had to google nettles just now.  I have heard the word nettles before, but never stinging nettles and I had no idea that they were dangerous, harmful, painful, whatever we want to call that.

    Love you, Ozark, but I am taking your wife’s side on this!  It’s a good thing you have so many other wonderful qualities.  :-)

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: It’s nasty stuff, lights one’s skin on fire. In my wife’s case she went from a pleasant stroll down a hillside to 60mph in .07 seconds, from a nice conversation of the cave we had just gotten out of to a screaming banshee. In my defense, she did manage to avoid those exact same plants on the way up to the cave, it just happened to have been by accident. How was I to know? Of course, my peals of laughter probably didn’t help.

    As with so many unpleasant plants, a tea brewed of the leaves is supposed to medicinal, and older hill folk in the Ozarks are pretty fond of it. I forget what all it is supposed to be good for.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    Well, the “frond theory” would make each bunch of leaves a leaf. A compound leaf.

    Another would be it’s a whorl of leaves where the new growth is arrayed around a center – not how coleus grows.

    We need a close up of the stem- if it’s square it’s a mint and coleus is a kind of mint- a nettle.

  63. 63.

    dww44

    @evap: I agree that it’s coleus.  Didn’t read down comments past your very first one.  Here in the south, I overwinter some plants but not that one.

  65. 65.

    MazeDancer

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Tincture of Stinging Nettle – and you want someone else to make it – is good for the adrenals, kidneys.

    Also, if taken prophylactically, ahead of the season, on a build-up basis, allergies.

    Used to do that in NM before Juniper Season. Along with the rest of the population, because Santa Fe. It helped.

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MazeDancer: Thanx. I think my book (which is around here somewhere) says it helps to reduce fevers too. Maybe good for the blood. But it’s been so long since I looked thru it who knows what I am conflating.

  68. 68.

    Doc Sardonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: Supposedly, nettle tea is good For urinary or prostate issues, along with blood sugar management and has a high amount of polyphenols for anti inflammatory properties. Anti inflammatory is slightly ironic since touching the plant will set you “on fire”.

  69. 69.

    StringOnAStick

    @MazeDancer:  I love your huge jade plant!  My long gone grandparents had them as a hedge in Coronado, CA; they were more stem than leaves so very otherworldly looking.

    I’m packing up our houseplants for our big move West (Cascadia, here we come!).  I gave away most of them, took clivia starts from my gorgeous 30 year old plant and gave the mom plant to a really close friend.  The cars are going to be full with a large kennel for two cats and cloth lined milk crates for the plants.  I knew we couldn’t transport that huge clivia without trashing the leaves, so I decided it was best to give her safe passage to another home here.  The 5′ talk ponytail palm will get to lay sideways inside a plastic bag, and all the rest are small starts from the favourites that became gifts to good homes.  Everything will have to come into our only hotel room stay so they don’t freeze overnight in the car.  Am I stressing?  Yes.

  70. 70.

    CarolPW

    @StringOnAStick: I managed a January trip from South Carolina to Washington State with a car full of orchids and a cat. It’s weird but not impossible. The luggage cart (or 2) is your friend.

  71. 71.

    MazeDancer

    @StringOnAStick:

    Have moved so many times, rehoming the plants every time.

    Drove across country with a kitty, she was surprisingly great.

    Be careful in CA. You can’t enter the state with plants. Would also check Oregon laws. Not that you will get checked, but just a heads up. Have a box or blanket to throw over them.

  72. 72.

    smedley the uncertain

    @OzarkHillbilly:  The stem is square.  Tiny white flowers grow on a long thin spike with one or two spikes per plant.  FYI, a broken off branch was stuck in a container with no additives or special care and is heartily flourishing.  Thank you all for your insights.  The pots will be brought in for the winter.

  75. 75.

    J R in WV

    Are “stinging nettles” the same as thistles? We have real tall thistles, this time of year they’re topped with fuzzy seeds, run 3 or 4 feet high.

    Otherwise I’m not familiar with stinging nettles. Tell me more about them… please?

  76. 76.

    MagdaInBlack

    @J R in WV: They aren’t thistles, they’re miserable bastages that make you sting and itch for hours if you so much as brush bare skin against them,, because they leave little fibers from the leaves.  I can tell you that much.

    Google has pictures, but I’ve given up posting links.

  78. 78.

    Achrachno

    @J R in WV: Thistles are sunflowers and have conspicuous flowers clustered into heads, usually white, purple or red in color.  Nettles are more inconspicuous plants (though some species are tall) with tiny green wind-pollinated flowers that lack petals altogether.  Thistles have conspicuous prickles on the leaf and bract tips and margins.  Nettles just have small stiff hairs, but those are hollow and have bulbous tips that break off on contact permitting the injection of an irritating fluid into the skin of people or animals.

    Some people eat nettles, after cooking (or just drying) they’re innocuous.  It’s claimed that they’re very nutritious.

  79. 79.

    StringOnAStick

    @MazeDancer: Wow, I hadn’t considered that. We drive there  (OR) last winter and didn’t see any plant check stations.  A few of these have serious sentimental value. Thanks for the heads up.

  84. 84.

    Achrachno

    Sorry but there is no way that I can make this a Coleus or anything else in the mint family. I think people are being misled by the red color — which color seems to overwhelm many human brains to the point where they can’t see the underlying structures. We need a better picture, but from the ones we have we can eliminate Coleus. Physical structures, to the degree we can see them, do not match at all.

    It’s a puzzle. I don’t know what it is, but there are several things I’m sure it’s not.

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