CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The reviews of the Wave Petunias are mixed. Libby Tolley, who works at the Department of Agriculture, writes:
"I planted about five Wave Petunias in a large pot this past spring. They were blooming beautifully for a while, but then they started sending out these ugly, brown, stringlike runner growths. These brown strings started wrapping themselves around the other plants and eventually covered the whole plant. They were choking the buds and preventing them from blooming further.
"At first, I was ripping them off, but they kept coming back thicker, and I finally just ripped up all the plants. I talked to the groundskeepers here at the Department of Agriculture, but they had never heard of petunias doing that. Do you know of any petunias that send out growths like that? Did I get some sort of climbing petunias? I started calling them killer petunias. I don't want to get them next year."
Most garden centers list the plant as "vigorous spreaders" and "great fillers." According to plant specialists at Ohio State, The Wave Rose and Wave Misty Lilac varieties of wave petunias are less aggressive growers than the Wave Purple and Wave Pink varieties.
Any other "killer petunia" stories out there?
Another reader story
Helen C. Scragg had this response to the reader who asked if she should bring in her gardenia for the winter:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The reviews of the Wave Petunias are mixed. Libby Tolley, who works at the Department of Agriculture, writes:
"I planted about five Wave Petunias in a large pot this past spring. They were blooming beautifully for a while, but then they started sending out these ugly, brown, stringlike runner growths. These brown strings started wrapping themselves around the other plants and eventually covered the whole plant. They were choking the buds and preventing them from blooming further.
"At first, I was ripping them off, but they kept coming back thicker, and I finally just ripped up all the plants. I talked to the groundskeepers here at the Department of Agriculture, but they had never heard of petunias doing that. Do you know of any petunias that send out growths like that? Did I get some sort of climbing petunias? I started calling them killer petunias. I don't want to get them next year."
Most garden centers list the plant as "vigorous spreaders" and "great fillers." According to plant specialists at Ohio State, The Wave Rose and Wave Misty Lilac varieties of wave petunias are less aggressive growers than the Wave Purple and Wave Pink varieties.
Any other "killer petunia" stories out there?
Another reader story
Helen C. Scragg had this response to the reader who asked if she should bring in her gardenia for the winter:
"My sister-in-law in Louisville, Ky., started a gardenia plant outside several seasons ago. It grew so rapidly it became too large to take inside in the cooler weather, so my brother built a removable greenhouse around it and let it stay outside and grow. He removes the covering in the spring and, alas, it is over 12 feet tall! They give gardenias as gifts to all friends and have even started new plants as gifts. It is gigantic and, oh, the awesome scent that fills their surroundings! Wonder how long it will survive."
Flowers from the past
Sharon Harms wrote to me to tell this garden story about a search for a flower's identity.
"In 1978, I was driving around in Fayetteville, near Summersville, where I was living at the time after recently having moved to West Virginia from Chicago. I happened upon some absolutely amazing peach-colored flowers growing alongside an abandoned road that led down into the New River Gorge canyon. I picked a few flowers and brought them home with me. I pored over all my wildflower books trying to identify these beauties that I had never seen before. I could not find anything to reference them to in any of my many books.
"I pressed the flowers and sent some to my Grandma Harms, who knew everything about wildflowers. She could not identify them either. So I sent the remaining pressed samples to the Smithsonian. Months passed and I heard nothing. I moved from Summersville to Charleston and had almost forgotten the little flowers when to my surprise a letter came from the Smithsonian identifying the rare flowers as yellow fringed prairie orchids. Wow, I thought, I really must make it back to Fayetteville and revisit those little gems. At that time I was a renter with an extensive collection of indoor plants, including a few tropical orchids I had brought to West Virginia with me from Chicago, but no outdoor garden.
"Years passed -- 31 years to be exact -- and in that time I became a homeowner and an obsessive gardener. In August, my husband and my daughter wanted to go ziplining in the tree canopy in the New River Gorge ... I am not good with heights so I declined to join them, but I rode up there with them to enjoy other things while they were on their three-hour adventure.
"After I dropped them off, I headed out to try to find that road again where 31 years before I had seen those flowers. I found the road -- I found the orchids and now eight healthy specimens grace my woodland garden in Charleston. I was careful to take only a small number of the plants and not wipe out the colony. Of course, today you can find anything on the Internet, including yellow fringed prairie orchid references. They are actually peach-colored. Isn't nature wonderful!"
Reach Sara Busse at sara.bu...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1249.
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