Saugus Gardens in the Summer

Here’s what’s blooming in town this week to make your walks more enjoyable

By Laura Eisener

Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are among the pollinators often seen in our gardens at this time of year. There are over 250 species. The bumble bees’ “fuzzy coats” enable them to insulate themselves somewhat from cooling temperatures so that they are able to fly around during the fall when the air temperatures would indicate otherwise.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Humble-Bee,” the writer seems to admire the bee’s ability to take the best from life and ignore the rest:

“Wiser far than human seer,

Yellow-breeched philosopher!

Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet,

Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.”

The famous 19th century Concord philosopher, poet and essayist often wrote about nature and had keen observations on plants and wildlife in New England.

The daytime temperatures after Sunday’s storm were pleasant for walking. The evenings and early mornings have been cool, and the sounds of the crickets, and often the cicadas, have made the evenings interesting. The clouds blocked the full moon, but with the rainclouds all gone on Monday night it still looked quite full. A few leaves on the trees are developing some fall color, but for the most part foliage is still as green as it was in summer.

At this time of year anyone who visits a garden center or farm shop is likely to find that one genus of plants is much more in evidence than others: Chrysanthemums! When everything else has been moved to the back of the garden center to make room for Chrysanthemums, I would say that it has been “mummified.” In Japan, September 9 is known as National Chrysanthemum Day, also known as the Festival of Happiness.

One of the interesting forms that hardy mums can take is the spoon petalled style. Available in a good range of flower colors, including red, pink, yellow, orange, purple and white, the narrow petals are rolled like a tube up to their tip, which opens out a bit, resembling a long-handled spoon. The term often used for this petal form is spatulate. Since the end actually shows the inside of the tube, it may be a slightly different shade than the rest of the petal. The purple spoon mums shown above have a deeper purple color along the spoon’s “Handle” while the end is paler, nearly white. Spoon mums are usually semi-double, which means that the yellow disk flowers which don’t have petals are visible, as it is in many daisy-like flower heads within the aster family (Asteraceae), to which chrysanthemums belong. The National Chrysanthemum Society lists 13 classes of Chrysanthemums, with spoon mums being Class 9.

The fruit of tomatillo, sometimes called the Mexican husk tomato (Physalis philadelphicus), is often grown for use in making salsa verde, or green sauce. This plant is an annual in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and a few others. A pretty good description of this fruit would be a tomato growing inside a dry lantern-like husk, similar in appearance to Julia Aston’s Chinese lanterns (Alkekengi officinarum) in last week’s column. The tomatillo has small yellow flowers all summer, with a smoky purple center. In order to produce fruits, they need cross-pollination, so it is necessary to plant a group of them or the husks will be nearly empty, while plants which have been pollinated will have nearly full husks.

  Editor’s Note: Laura Eisener is a landscape design consultant who helps homeowners with landscape design, plant selection and placement of trees and shrubs, as well as perennials. She is a member of the Saugus Garden Club and offered to write a series of articles about “what’s blooming in town” shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was inspired after seeing so many people taking up walking.