Daily home & garden tip: Plants with attitude draw attention

The OregonianRed-hot pokers (Kniphofia)

Every garden should have a few plants with attitude, if for no other reason than to stir things up a little. Too much pretty can be boring. I cite the Miss Universe contest and rest my case.

If you look at pictures of pretty English cottage gardens, notice that they often have a big, gray, felty-leaved

Verbascum bombyciferum

(giant mullein) sticking up like an exclamation point. Now there's a plant that won't be winning any beauty contests.

Not all plants with attitude are ugly. Some, such as the little

Primula vialii

(hard to believe it's a primrose), are simply saucy. How else could you describe a loud purple flower with an outrageous, lipstick-red top

Others express their attitude by reaching mammoth proportions.

Gunnera

, the dinosaur plant, is certainly an example with its giant hairy leaves.

The OregonianEucomis 'Sparkling Burgundy'

I haven't decided if

Eucomus

is ugly or pretty, but it surely is a distinctive, and therefore interesting, plant. Who would have thought something would produce flowers that look like pineapples? They make good pot plants where you can see them up close.

Arisaema

, commonly called names such as jack-in-the-pulpit, looks as if it arrived from another planet. So do all

Eryngium

. That metallic silvery sheen gives them an interesting if unearthly look.

I could go on about plants with attitude. They include great billowing, chartreuse-flowered

Euphorbia characias

, spiky

Phormium

, thorny

Rosa sericea pteracantha

and that stately prairie flower,

Eupatorium

(Joe Pye weed).

Others include the pow of purple

Allium giganteum

, sizzling

Kniphofia

(red-hot pokers), all those metallic-blue plants, such as

Cerinthe major

'Purpurascens,' and, among the bulbs, the shamelessly showy

Fritillaria imperialis

So what do these plants have in common? Plants with attitude are audacious, riveting and sometimes downright bizarre. They make a statement, and that statement is usually "look at me." They never commit that one unpardonable sin in gardening, which is to say they are never boring.

Perhaps this is why we're inordinately fond of them, even when they're on the ugly side. How else to explain the fascination with cactuses, cardoons and yucca?

-- Dulcy Mahar

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