24 November 2008

Purple Mustard

The mustard greens are looking so amazing right now. Check out that purple!



The toscano kale is looking mighty fine too, I must say, with a red russian kale peeking out from behind.



Lots of buds on the Meyer lemon.



Out with the old, in with the new. A broccoli leaf drizzled with beads of dew in front of basil going to seed.



And here's this weird creature, which I thought was a violet. Any ideas? It's sending up these seedheads now, but I haven't seen any flowers at all. Strange.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The mustard greens look lovely, such a good colour. I must give them a try

Unknown said...

I think your last plant is Missouri violet. Got one at Lady Bird Wildflower center sale one year and it has proliferated in my garden. The flowers aren't much to look at and don't last long, but my plant and the seed stalks look just like yours.It makes a nice evergreen groundcover in my yard, though some might consider it somewhat invasive(like Katy ruellia it seeds everywhere but you can pull them out easily when they are small.)

Annie in Austin said...

I like the look of the mustard greens too, Lee!

Some wild violets make two kinds of flowers -the pretty ones that we all know, plus another set that aren't showy...think that's where those seedheads came from. The word for these flowers is cleistogamous.
No wonder a couple of violets can take over a flowerbed!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Anonymous said...

All the photos look great. esp the deep purple mustard, I have some baby plants right now, I more grow them for salad greens, but I think the temps have to be cooler to get such a deep shade of purple.

Lee17 said...

I have some of those Violets also and they spread all over, but never once have they had any purple flowers! They only send up those dry little seed-head thingies. These cleistogamous flowers turn to fruits without blooming and spit their seeds everywhere. I wish they would get some purple violets ont them. maybe they are in too much shade? I have no idea....

Lee said...

I don't mind the violets as a groundcover myself (I say that now, right?), but flowers would be nice.

It's funny, I've found sort of the same thing with another local groundcover: lyre-leaf sage. I've seen it have beautiful pale blue flowers, but I've almost never seen them bloom like that in my yard. I only notice them after the seeds are setting. I think this is more of a case of not looking hard enough, than cleistogamy.

BTW, thanks for the new big bad-ass word: cleistogamy. Cool!