Well I've gotten them on Penstemon eatonii, got them on Heuchera sanguinea, and now I've got them on Mimulus cardinalis!

I've had the same two feeders out the past couple of days, and they ran dry this afternoon. I knew they were getting low this morning, but I forgot to fill them. I have a steady stream of feeder junkie females. The males are almost always on the flowers, but these females have been using the feeders almost exclusively. I think they're in a big hurry to get back to their nests, and the feeders are like fast food--one stop dining!

I was feeling guilty that the feeders had been empty for probably a couple hours, and it was getting late in the day when they start to get hungry before nightfall. Just when I was kicking myself for my negligence, a couple females came down and started fighting over the Mimulus. I ran inside and got my video camera and put it on a tripod, aimed at the flowers. They are just starting to bloom, so these are the only two flowers on the whole clump. While I was inside mixing sugar water, I left the camera running, and here is my brief video...



...and here are some stills...

Very nice Kristin. Thanks for sharing. How did you get this plant to bloom so early? For us in Wisconsin, it doesn't begin blooming until early July.

By the way, we found Penstemon eatonii at a local nursery this weekend and it's now in the ground with sand and gravel mixed in with the soil. We'll keep our fingers crossed!

You must have amazing habitat around your house to enjoy all these hummers!!




Kathi and Michael Rock
Madison, Wisconsin
Zone 4/5

Thanks, Kathi.

July 27th. That's when the first bloom opened on my Mimulus last year.

Take a look at last year's "What's Blooming" thread...

http://www.network54.com/Forum/439743/thread/1216252207/What%27s+Blooming+July+16th---%26gt%3BJuly+31st++%28Please+include+your+zone%29

Yours started blooming earlier than mine--July 17th! I have been astonished by how well this plant has done for me this year. I think it has quadrupled in spread, and is twice as tall as last year. It's amazing. My Bleeding Hearts also did well this year, and bloomed earlier than usual. Odd thing is, we had lots of unusually cold weather in May, and I lost all my Salvia coccinea seedlings because I brought them indoors for a week or two and didn't have enough space under my grow lights. I thought they'd be OK in the window, but it was so relentlessly dreary that they got mold and died. They are usually so easy to grow. Fortunately, I was able to salvage a few volunteer seedlings from outside, but I don't have nearly as many plants as I would have had from my ones started indoors.

But, I digress. I have no idea what's going on with these Mimulus, but I sure am enjoying it!

Off to bed. It's late, even for me!

Kristin:

I was inspired by your success to try this plant again this year. I grew six from seed this year and mine started to bloom this past week. I'm hoping to be able to overwinter it in my perennial bed.

Donald

Zone 4 Red Wing MN

Kristen,

Nice video and nice bloom. I wanted to mention the Ruellia Elegans seeds you sent me are just starting to get the shoots the blooms will be on. The plants are only about 4 inches tall. How much bigger will they get this year?

And the Silene Regia plants are all in the ground, but they won't bloom this year, will they?


Pam NJ 6B

You are so lucky, Kathi, to have a LOCAL nursery that has Penstemon eatonii!! Most of our nurseries around here are pathetic. We used to have a good one, but it was an hour's drive, almost, and now it's dropped its retail operations and does only landscaping. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed for you with the eatonii. With any luck, it will bloom next year. Sounds like you're doing the right thing with the sand and gravel. I put quite a bit into my clay soil.

Pam, thanks for the update on the Ruellia. I'm so pleased to hear that you were successful with it from seed. I overwintered my plant and took cuttings, so didn't need to sow the seeds. I have no idea if mine was a hybrid or not, so don't know if it will come true. Let me know when it blooms. I'd say it can get 18" tall and spreads maybe a foot. I had 3 plants in a (16"?) pot and they did great.

I don't know about the Silene, because I started mine from plants. I think it would take a couple years from seed, but I'll bet someone on this forum has definite experience and knows for sure.

Donald, so pleased to hear I was the inspiration for you trying the Mimulus. I hope you have a nice wet place for them. They wilt like crazy around here if it gets hot and dry. Not so this year, though. We've had so much rain that western PA is a steamy jungle. The Mimulus are loving it! I have a couple of your patens/brasiliensis seed grown cannas placed in a group with Patricia's red-leafed species cannas. Yours have nice green leaves, so the two look good together. They're still fairly small, but when the weather gets more consistently warm, I'm sure they will have a rapid growth spurt.

Kristin.....So glad to see this & great pix. I love it!! Can you post one further away so we can see how it grows for you? Starting from seed last year (Twinkle Red) was a no, no. Had 1 bloom on a miniscule plant & that's all she wrote. Going to work on my pond/bog area this weekend. I bought 2 gallon pots of cardinalis from Forest Farm & they look great, although no blooms yet. I also bought Mimulus lewesii/pink monkey flower (hope that's how it's spelled without me looking it up). Just had 1 bloom so far but it was too crappy to take a pix & day later, the bloom dropped. Will get the next one. Just stopped at a new place yesterday & bought Mimulus ringens (lavender monkey flower) & it has blooms all over it. Will try to get a pix in a day or two since we finally are going to have sun after tomorrow. Have you tried lewesii or ringens?

When cleaning out the shed at parents house (been awol for awhile trying to get their house ready to sell), bro-in-law found a roll of pond liner so I will making them a new bog area next to my in-ground make-shift bed. Bought this rectangular (4'x2'x6")thing last year at Menards that I think paint is mixed in, put a few drainage holes in it & buried it flush with the ground & filled it with a peat/soil mix. Planted 4 Cardinal flowers in it & 3 of the 4 came back. Wanted to test it out & so far so good. I was concerned the roots wouldn't be deep enough to survive the winter but even after the rough one we had, it worked.

Back to cardinalis...how long do blooms stay on plant? Just curious.

Thanks!!
Joni
Elwood, IL
Zone 5

Nice camera work Kristin!

Maryjane
W Ga
Zone 8a

Kristin,

We were very lucky to find Penstemon eatonii at a local nursery (I was so excited when I saw it!)---it is doing just great so far and probably won't bloom this year, but we can wait. We just have not had good luck with High Country Gardens in the past and I like to look at their catalogs, but am not going to order from them for a while. We also found Scrophularia macrantha (Red Birds in a Tree) there too and both plants we purchased were huge, healthy and already blooming (that never happened with HCG!) I don't mean to beat up on HCG, but we just haven't found them to be worth ordering from lately.

You guys would love this particular perennial nursery called "The Flower Factory"---it's huge and they have so much. They also have a huge garden to walk through and everything is healthy and blooming even in early June (which is usually not the case in Wisconsin.) We also purchased Salvia greggii, agastache and a few other things. They had a huge selection of penstemon. Of course, we need to go somewhere else for the tropicals, but it was so exciting to find such healthy specimens of the Scrophularia macrantha and Penstemon eatonii.



Kathi and Michael Rock
Madison, Wisconsin
Zone 4/5

Joni, ask and you shall receive. Too bad it only has a few blooms, but here are some photos showing the entire clump in context:









Can you see all the flower buds on this one?


I haven't tried M. lewisii or M. ringens. I don't see where I could find the room. Too bad we can't grow everything we want! The individual blooms last for only 2-3 days, but the bloom season is much longer. This plant is blooming about a month and a half earlier this year, so not sure if it will quit earlier, or bloom for weeks and weeks. We'll see. I imagine if it gets very hot (in the 90's) that may cut it short.

Thanks Maryjane, but all I really did was set the video camera on a tripod, focused it, and let it run. It was kind of cloudy and the lighting poor, but video cameras are pretty good at functioning in low light, I've noticed. I'm so glad to have a record of their visits to this plant.

Oh, and Kathi, just thought I'd mention that although P. eatonii is a drought lover, I watered mine pretty well last summer while it was establishing, and it didn't seem to mind a bit. This year, now that it has settled in, I'm not watering it at all. Our 35 or so inches of rain a year ought to be more than enough, I think.