Saugus Gardens in the Winter

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

By Laura Eisener

Tomorrow, Saturday, is both St. Patrick’s Day and St. Gertrude’s Day. While St. Patrick’s Day is very well known and green decorations abound all over town, St. Gertrude’s Day may be celebrated a little more quietly by purring in a warm window. St. Gertrude of Nivelles is known as the patron saint of cats. While her association with cats is quite recent, she was long known as a protector against bubonic plague, and therefore often seen as protecting people from rats and mice, which might carry diseases. Nivelles is a city in what is now called Belgium. The date of her feast day, as for St. Patrick, was selected as it was the date she died.

Two different but similar looking plants that have compound leaves with three leaflets each are often displayed in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. One is clover (Trifolium spp.), which usually has three leaflets but occasionally four. The other is wood sorrel (Oxalis spp.), which also has three leaflets. Clover leaflet shape is usually rounded but sometimes heart shaped. Wood sorrel foliage may be heart shaped or triangular with a cleft tip, depending on species. Wood sorrel seems to be sold more often than clover at St. Patrick’s Day in our area – due to our cold March weather, we tend to enjoy it as a house plant.

‘Molten Lava’ volcanic wood sorrel (Oxalis vulcanicova ‘Molten Lava’) is an annual variety of wood sorrel that has green and golden foliage and golden flowers. It can be kept in a pot through the summer or planted outside in the garden, but it certainly has appropriate coloring and shape for St. Patrick’s Day. This species is native to Mexico and only hardy to zone 8, so cannot be grown outdoors through the winter in our climate. If brought indoors before frost, it can survive several years. Depending on variety, leaves of volcanic wood sorrel may be green and gold, green and dark red (variety ‘Zinfandel’) or purple (variety ‘Plum Crazy’), and the flower color is variable as well. The leaflets are heart shaped. While it doesn’t usually develop blossoms until later in spring, the colorful leaves make it interesting in every season.

One of the most popular ornamental varieties of wood sorrel sold for St. Patrick’s Day is false shamrock (Oxalis triangularis), which has fairly large triangular leaflets, as the species epithet would suggest. Dark purple leaves are a great contrast to the pale pink or white flowers, and the foliage is ornamental and interesting whether or not the plant is in bloom. Another interesting trait of this species is that the leaflets droop somewhat at night or in low light and open up again in sunny weather.

Outside, crocus, snowdrops, winter aconite, several bulb iris species and Lenten roses continue to bloom. Lenten roses (Helleborus orientalis and hybrids) are fibrous rooted perennials and don’t produce a bulb underground as the others do. The Lenten roses are most closely related to the winter aconites, as both belong to the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae).

Once the days are as long as the nights, it really begins to feel as if winter is behind us. Tuesday, March 19, marks the spring equinox, and it is also celebrated as National Agriculture Day. Thursday is International Day of Forests, and Friday is World Water Day, so we have a week of celebrations to appreciate farms, forests and lakes as important features of our surroundings.

  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.

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