Nicotiana

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, bird of paradise, buddleia peaked, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, sweet pea, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, Maximilian sunflower.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, toothed spurge, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, goats’ head, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, horseweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers peaked, gumweed, broom senecio, Tahokia daisy, purple, heath and golden hairy asters.

In my yard looking north: Nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum, Crackerjack marigold; leaves turning yellow on Lapins cherry.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, large-leaf soapwort waning, Shirley poppy, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, zinnias, tansy.

Looking south: Blaze and miniature roses, cypress vine; some orange red on spirea leaves.

Looking west: Russian sage, catmint, lady bells, David phlox bedraggled, calamintha, purple coneflower, Mönch aster; flowering spurge and skunkbush leaves turning yellow-orange.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, gecko, cabbage butterfly on purple asters, bee on hollyhock, wasp on blanket flower, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Morning temperatures in upper 40's; a little rain Friday night; 11:44 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: I do wish, when I find something that grows, nurserymen would stop trying to improve it.

Nicotiana alata has been on the betterment list, almost since it was introduced from an area of Brazil being settled by Germans in the 1820's and described from a specimen in the Berlin botanical garden in 1830. It was fragrant, but two to three feet tall, and inclined to collapse from the weight of its greenish flowers, which only opened after sundown.

It begged for improvement. By 1912, William Setchell believed the garden flower, alternately called Nicotiana affinis or Nicotiana alata grandiflora, was a larger flowered selection. In 1916, Percy Ricker questioned if the nightshade species itself was even in cultivation.

Help had arrived when Louis Forget sent another species, found primarily in the mountainous region of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul states in southern Brazil, to Henry Sander, the well-connected German-born British orchid importer.

Italians had begun settling the Serra Gaúcha highlands in 1875, and this species, like alata, had adapted by abandoning its rocky outcrops in distant canyons for the surer environment along roads and fallow fields. They haven’t yet met in Brazil, but researchers believe that, as roads continue to expand and the plants’ ranges draw closer, the time’s approaching when some large hawkmoth will take pollen from a perennial alata and deposit it on an annual forgetiana to produce a viable hybrid.

Man couldn’t wait. Nicotiana needed immediate improvement. The influential Alice Morse Earle had complained in 1901 that spent flowers stank the morning after. A new cross was introduced in 1905 with promotions reminiscent of today’s product roll outs. The hybrid sanderae was described in William Robinson’s weekly garden journal with a testimonial by the president of the Royal Horticultural Society, Trevor Lawrence, while the species forgetiana was formally baptized by the keeper of Kew Herbarium, William Botting Hemlsey, in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.

Sanderae was praised for its compact habit and ability to withstand drought. Unfortunately, while its parent was brilliant red, it also had no detectable fragrance. In its native habitat, forgetiana’s shorter funnels attract hummingbirds, not the hawkmoths that favor alatas.

The conflicting demands for fragrance and dwarfness in increasingly smaller, suburban gardens led to a number of varieties that came and went before I bought my first Nikki White in Michigan in 1985. My only requirement was that a bedding plant survive transplantation, and this one produced five-petaled flowers resembling small petunias all summer. Enough to want more.

I was able to buy red and white Nikkis grown from Pan American seed until 1990, when Floranova’s Domino Red became the only plant available. Thompson and Morgan claimed it was a "marked improvement over older F₁" hybrids because it was neater and nearly in flower when planted out. The latter is good for growers, and Floranova claims its improvements have made nicotiana an accepted bedding plant.

Fine, but Domino didn’t do as well in my garden as had Nikki.

Ornamental tobaccos have been scarce in New Mexico. I bought some unnamed varieties from the local hardware that bloomed in 2002 and 2003. Then, in 2004 White Domino was all that was available. It didn’t last the summer. The few Hummingbirds that survived in 2006 went in and out of bloom. They were abandoned by Ball in 2009.

This year, I saw some Perfume Reds, another variety released by Floranova, in a garden store in Albuquerque. They had shrunk to 12" plants dense with large, sticky leaves and upward facing flowers that were supposed to be fragrant and require no maintenance. I have no idea if they have an aroma - I rarely bend to their level. They don’t greet me like chocolate flowers or David phlox.

However, they have bloomed all summer with a deep, alluring color. Occasionally, their throats, surrounded by lighter color circlets inherited from forgetiana, reach for the sun That’s enough.

Please, no more improvements. Let me enjoy.

Notes:
Earle, Alice Morse. Old Time Gardens, 1901; she said that while affinis had a "honey sweetness" at night, "you will be glad it withholds its perfume by day."

Hemsley, William Botting. "Nicotiana forgetiana," Curtis' Botanical Magazine, plant 8006, 1905.

Ippolito, Anthony, G. Wilson Fernandes, and Timothy P. Holtsford. "Pollinator Preferences for Nicotiana alata, N. forgetiana, and Their F₁ Hybrids," Evolution 58:2634-44:2004.

Link, Johann Heinrich Friedrich and Christoph Friedrich Otto. Icones Plantarum Rariorum Horti Regii Botanici Berolinensis, 1830, on alata.

Ricker, P. L. "Nicotiana," in Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, volume 4, 1916.

Robinson, William. The Garden, 7 January 1905.

Setchell, William Albert. Studies in Nicotiana, 1912.

Thompson and Morgan. The Seed Catalogue, 1986.

Photograph: Red Perfume nicotiana, 26 September 2010, with sun illuminating the funnel and recessed stamens.