holiday plants, holiday plants and pets, holiday plants and small children, toxic holiday plants, toxic houseplants, toxic plants

Toxic Holiday Plants

With the holiday season upon us I enjoy colorful plants on my tabletop and window sill. How safe are holiday plants for pets and small children?

I already have a beautiful poinsettia on my table and soon I?ll be getting other holiday plants such as cyclamen, paperwhite narcissus, maybe a pink jasmine wreath or one with holly, ivy and evergreens. I also like those rosemary topiaries that are trained in the shape of a Christmas tree and have already started one of those huge showy amaryllis bulbs. Christmas cactus grow in several locations. Some of these plants that may be toxic.

Poinsettia

Poinsettia hold up well either as a cut flower or a living plant. This is the classic plant to decorate our homes at this time of year. Mostly it?s too cold here in the mountains for poinsettia to survive outside at night but being native to Mexico they thrive in the warmth of the house. They need a bright spot and the soil should be allowed to dry slightly, but not completely, between watering. Deprive them of either of these requirements and the lower leaves will yellow and drop. Also be sure they aren’t sitting in water at the bottom of the container. Poinsettia are brittle but if you break off a branch sear the end of the stem with a flame and it will hold up quite well in a vase or arrangement.

Are poinsettia poisonous? Ohio State University conducted extensive research and concluded that although poinsettia sap from leaves and flowers that might give you a stomach ache if you ate them they won?t seriously hurt you. The sap may cause a rash if it comes in contact with the skin on some people. With this in mind, you should keep poinsettia plants out of the reach of curious pets and small children.

There are two pets in my household– a cat named Archer and Sherman, the Welch springer spaniel. I usually put a couple red and white cyclamen on a table in the house. Are cyclamen safe around them?

Cyclamen

According to the Pet Poison Helpline cyclamen are mild to moderately toxic to dogs and cats if ingested but it?s the root or corm that is especially toxic if ingested in large quantities. Pets and people react differently and it is unlikely that children) would eat the corm and be affected.

Amaryllis

My beautiful amaryllis flower and leaves are safe but the bulb is toxic. Amaryllis bulbs contain the same alkaloid that is found in narcissus and daffodil and is the reason deer know to leave them alone. Ingesting a small amount will produce few or no symptoms, however.

Azalea leaves and Christmas cactus are toxic and should be kept away from pets and small children. Holly berries are toxic if eaten in large quantities. Same for mistletoe and ivy.

While serious complications aren?t likely with holiday plants it?s still best to keep them away from small children and out of your pet?s reach.

foliage color, gift ideas, wildlife gardening, winter color, winter flowering plants

Winter Flowering Plants & Gift Ideas

Finally the rain has come. Outside my window a Townsend warbler feasts on suet. It?s a rainy day and I?m enjoying the vivid colors of my late fall garden. Backlit leaves take on a whole new look.There are so many ways of combining plants in the garden. I?m taking notes so I remember my favorites to include in my own garden and future designs.

Many of my grasses and plants are deciduous and are in the process of going dormant. Even when I mix in broadleaf evergreen plants these groupings lose their impact this time of year. I have only been gardening at this house for a few years so the new plants are still small except the ceanothus that grow like a weed. I?ve had to replant many shrubs and perennials as I was a little cavalier with my gopher basket use at the beginning. But I persevere as I love color in the garden, especially foliage color.

It?s the combinations that look great year-round that hold a garden together. I?ve got two leucadendron that are real troupers when it comes to drought, mucho summer sun, zero winter sun, sandy soil and deer browsing.

The ?Safari Sunset? shows off those vivid burgundy bracts nearly year round with the best show starting during the summer and extending right through to the next spring. Leaucadendron require good drainage and prefer acidic conditions. It?s easy to love this plant to death with too much water.

Mexican marigold

Yellow is always a cheery color in the garden at any time of year. The deep golden flowers of Mexican marigold are carried on branch ends sporadically all year, peaking in winter and spring. Finely divided leaves are strongly fragrant when crushed and smell like a blend of marigold, lemon and mint which is why deer avoid them. Prune them lightly to control shape and size. They grows 3-6 ft tall and as wide. Another shrub that blooms all winter and has yellow daisies is euryops. They are deer resistant and grow to about 3 ft.

Blue and yellow foliage or flowers combine well. You can pick from yellow or gold foliage plants such as phormium ?Yellow Wave?, abelia ?Kaleidoscope?, coleonema ?Sunset Gold? or sedum ?GoldMoss? and pair it with a dwarf blue spruce, blue fescue or blue oat grass, hens and chickens, a blue euphorbia such as ?Glacier Blue? or ?Blue Haze? or the blue-gray succulent senecio mandraliscae.

If you have a little more space, try ‘Rose Glow’ leptospermum near a ceanothus ‘Concha’. The contrast between the deep red flowers of the tea tree with the bright blue flowers of the California lilac will certainly get your attention. These larger shrubs reach about 6 ft tall and as wide.

You might have one of the following butterfly favorites that you could divide and pot up for a friend. Yarrow, aster, veronica, agapanthus, astilbe, coreopsis and gaura to name a few that butterflies favor. Ceanothus and columbine are two plants that self sow in my garden and would be great to pot up for a gift. A gift doesn?t need to cost very much to show you care.

One of the lime foliage Heuchera 

With the holiday season upon us think of giving plants as gifts. Any of the above plants would be appreciated by fellow plants lovers or you could give an offset of one of your plants that birds, bees or butterflies would appreciate. Some easy-to-divide favorites that attract birds include foxglove, coral bells, red-hot poker, California fuchsia, mahonia and purple coneflower.

berries, birds, El Nino, fall garden, grasses

Twas the Week after Thanksgiving

If working in the garden Thanksgiving weekend is not high on your list then you?re in luck. Here are some reasons why along with other information you need to know.

In the category of news you can use. A reader shared with me that a plant I mentioned a couple weeks ago in my column about hedges- Italian buckthorn or rhamnus alaternus – has evolved and is now considered invasive by the California Invasive Plant Council. Seems that over the past 3 to 4 years Italian buckthorn ?John Edwards? has overcome the reproduction invasion barrier of being entirely dioecious (having male and female plants separate). The shrub has become a serious problem in riparian and other wildland areas. Birds love the berries which are apparently all female. Thank you to my faithful reader for sharing this information with me. Don?t plant this shrub.

Being that November has was so dry up until the day before Thanksgiving I looked up the current El Nino rain prediction for this winter season. Interesting enough I found lots of info on the surfline website in addition to NOAA. Sounds like we?re still on track for California?s midsection to have an equal chance of more precipitation than other years and warmer than usual from December to February. Can?t come soon enough for me.

For me the growing season is pretty much over except to enjoy what?s left of fall color and the ornamental grasses waving their seed heads in the wind. A lot of perennials are dying back but I?m not in a hurry to neaten things up. The seed heads left in the garden supply food for birds and other creatures while the foliage provides shelter for the plant in the cold and frost. Remove anything when it turns slimy or just plain unattractive but leave berries and seed heads for the birds and winter interest.

Lesser Goldfinch

At this time of year my garden is visited mostly by chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, purple finches and warblers. They will spend the winter here and I?m doing them a big favor by not cutting back brown foliage containing nutrient-rich seed heads. Some of the reliable seed producers that I won?t have to clean up this weekend include artemisia, aster, coreopsis, penstemon, sedum, lupine, salvia, black-eye Susan, coneflower, phlomis, monarda, agapanthus and grasses.

Chickadees gather hundreds of seeds in fall and early winter and store them in hiding places to ensure themselves a food supply later in the season. They are a remarkable bird that we take for granted being so common. I read in Audubon magazine a couple years ago that a chickadee weighs about as much as a dozen paperclips but their body is large for their weight. This means they have to ramp up the number of hours they devote to feeding. At night chickadees cram themselves into tiny cavities and shiver, burning the day’s fuel to keep from freezing.

Hummingbirds still need a nectar source at this time of year. Anna’s hummingbirds live in this area all year long. So In addition to the plants in my garden that supply nectar I keep my feeders up year-round and keep them clean. They need your nectar even more in the winter when very little is in bloom. In addition to nectar rich natives like mahonia my abutilons are a winter favorite for them.

And I don?t need to prune trees and shrubs at this time of year. Other than clipping a few well placed branches to use in a holiday wreath, I?m off the hook for this task right now. Deciduous trees are still in the process of losing their leaves and are not fully dormant. Evergreens shrubs and conifers can be trimmed lightly but most shaping is done when they start growing in late winter or very early spring.

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