- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
On the last few days of Year 2019, where do you find a foraging honey bee?
Well, if the temperature soars to 50 or 55, you might see honey bees slip out of their hives and head for a winter flowering plant commonly known as the "red hot poker" or "Christmas cheer" (genus Kniphofia).
As its name implies, the red hot poker is dramatic. It's like the attention-grabbing red bow on a Christmas present, a passionate red heart on a Valentine's Day card, or the glowing red tip on a fireplace poker.
You can see this perennial in the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. It's one of the 100 Arboretum All-Stars. (And look for it at the Arboretum Teaching Nursery plant sales).
Arboreum horticulturists aptly describe it as "dramatic": “Dramatic plant brightens up the winter garden; at the top of its tall flowering stems, brilliant orange buds open to deep-gold tubular flowers; long, narrow leaves form an attractive, medium-large clump over time; attracts hummingbirds.”
And honey bees.
Native to Africa, Kniphofia belongs to the family Asphodelaceae and begins to flower in December. It's named for Johann Hieronymus Kniphof, an 18th-century German physician and botanist. In fact, the genus was first described in 1794, back when George Washington held forth in the White House and John Adams was his vice president.
Hear that buzz? Honey bees are gathering nectar and pollen on the Kniphofia. Can New Year's Eve and New Year's Day be far behind?
Nice knowing you, Year 2019. Welcome, Year 2020.
Happy New Year!
- Author: Karen Metz
I have always been impressed with the drama of hot pokers, Kniphofia. However several things held me back from purchasing them. First I don't like buying plants whose names I can't pronounce and Kniphofia ( knee fof ee a ) has had me stymied for a long time. When I was Googling Kniphofia, one of the first categories that came up was pronunciation, so I don't think I am alone. To me the name sounds like a sneeze; I get this uncontrollable urge to say "Gesundheit " every time I hear someone say it.
Secondly, most of the plants I have admired have been very large, with mounds of foliage reaching three to four feet high and sometimes five to eight feet wide and that's not even counting the blooms. I have a small front yard and a small border area available so I thought I would have to forgo a hot poker. (Note, in researching this article I found the most charming turn of phrase on the Digging Dog Nurserysite. Instead of calling a garden small, they called it space-thrifty.)
But then at Annie's Annuals I found Kniphofia 'Wol's Red Seedling'. This hybrid was carefully bred in England. Kniphofias are originally from South Africa, but were brought to England in the 1800s and are very popular there. This little darling has leaves that top out at a foot and flower spikes to two feet. It has a brilliant red color that is described by several sites as the reddest of all the pokers. They mentioned it could even be grown in a container. You guessed it, I brought one home.
I tucked it in the front yard in the border by the faux dry stream bed, amongst the 'Stella d'Oro' dwarf day-lilies and the lavender. The first summer it had three small blooms and I was a little discouraged. This year I have six blooms already, and the plant looks lovely, especially with the afternoon sun back-lighting it.
Kniphofias are deer resistant.They can handle clay soil, as long as it drains well. They are drought tolerant but do like water when the blooms are forming. If it is too dry at that point they will not bloom.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Country cousins.
Honey bees and ants belong to the same order, Hymenoptera, and occasionally you see them together.
Such was the case today in the Storer Garden, UC Davis Aboretum, as the closely related honey bees and ants foraged in the red-hot poker (Kniphofia galpinii or "Christmas cheer").
These ants? Argentine ants (Linepithema humile). "The Argentine ant is a non-native and a notorious pest," says UC Davis ant specialist Phil Ward, professor of entomology.
The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is also a non-native (it came over with the European colonists in the 1600s), but oh, what a non-native. We're so accustomed to it being a beneficial insect that we consider it a native.
Hymenoptera ("membrane wing") originated in the Triassic period, a geologic period that existed some 251 to 199 million years ago.
And today in a tiny thimble of time, they shared a red hot poker.