Brown flowers subdue and chasten the flames of the garden; they tame the cerise and magenta; they mollify the madder and vermilion. But, although their beauty is retiring and gentle, their fragrance is unrivaled by brighter-toned flowers.
It took a brown daylily to teach me the value of brown in the garden. Hemerocallis fulva Granada is a rich chestnut backed with gold.
The inner petals are curled. It is taller than Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, the yellow daylily. Separately, these daylilies lack flavor; planted together, the color composition is complete. Both are sweet-scented.
Brown Combinations In The Garden
There are as many browns in the garden as in the telephone directory. We have fawn, fox, brown, roan, and maroon; cinnamon, chestnut, hazel, and snuff; henna, bronze, copper, rust, and dust.
There are brown combinations — rosewood — brown over rose; puce —brown over purple; ecru — brown blended with white.
Some brown flowers are fiercely mysterious with tigers of purple and gold; others are penciled and splashed to acquire a third dimension — a depth unending.
A final gift from nature to this favored pigment is the velvet texture.
Brown Wildlings
A walk in the woods will disclose some brown wildings. The Asarum or wild ginger bears a chocolate flower in a three-way pattern at which the petals end in long points to rival the shoes and peaked cap of the little old Brownie himself.
The Asarum grows near the ground in dense woods and is apt to be overlooked. When you do see it, you may doubt your eyes. Even the leaves are mottled, puckish, and altogether eerie.
Another low grower is the brown peony, Peony brown, with five- and six-petaled flowers in dull brown over red. It blooms during the spring and summer in Californian woods.
Brown Trilliums
There are three brown trilliums:
- Trilliums lanceolatum is said to occur from Georgia to Alaska and is brown over purple
- Trilliums recurvatum, native from Mississippi to Arkansas
- Trilliums erectum, from North Carolina to Missouri
Brown Wildflower Calycanthus
We come now to an exciting brown wildflower, Calycanthus. C. Florida has dark green foliage and reddish-brown flowers.
These flowers are surprising to come upon. They resemble wild chrysanthemums, and to see chrysanthemums adorning a 14’ foot bush way out in the woods, will amaze anyone.
The flowers have enough petals to be considered at least semi-double, yet nature usually produces single flowers. The dark flowers of C. florida are fragrant in a spicy, bracing fashion.
Calycanthus occidentalis flowers are rosewood within and yellow ochre without. The leaf, trunk, and twig are all pungently sweet, but the flower is scentless.
Both these shrubs are procurable in nurseries specializing in wildings, and both look well in group plantings. Calycanthus is hardy; Calycanthus Florida is the hardier of the two.
Brown Flowers In Cultivated Garden
In the cultivated garden, brown flowers are everywhere. There are brown chrysanthemums, colored equally of earth, air, and sun.
Tan tulips resemble drained sunlight, brown-amber iris, pale dust dahlias, and sepia stocks. The tall calliopsis and the common marigold can lie in mahogany and maroon.
Everybody knows the elfin brown pansies and the rust and rosewood nasturtiums; what everybody does not know are the calceolaria in roan undershot with yellow and the salpiglossis in all shades of brown tiger boldly with purple, orange, and red.
Always Brown Boronia
Even less well-known is a flower that is always brown, Boronia mega stigma. Its countless thimble flowers are claret-brown lined with dark yellow.
Its fragrance is considered by many to be the sweetest in the world. It is a blend containing orange blossoms, to which the plant is related, both being rues.
And it partakes of violet and vanilla with a tang of spice. All this sweetness is poured forth both night and day in a stream that will permeate half a city.
Boronia can be grown outdoors in San Francisco, where the equable climate resembles that of Australia, from which the plant stems.
In a colder climate, it must be grown in a greenhouse during the Winter and set into the flower bed when frost is past.
It comes easily from seed obtained from Australian seed houses, and its roots readily from half-ripened tip cuttings, which will bloom as soon as struck, so virile is this little bush. We always grow new plants every two years as two-year-old branches suffer a die-back.
Short-Lived Boronia
As a matter of confession, Boronia is short-lived, though not at all delicate. At one time, potted Boronias were sold at Easter, and they kept the house richly scented weeks after the pale Easter lily had meekly folded.
Boronias require light, rich soil, perfect drainage, and full sun. There is another Boronia, B. elatior, a much taller shrub bearing rosy-purple, unscented thimbles.
Shy Brownie
A rather shy “brownie” is Matthiola bicornis, the evening-scented stock, described as purplish-brown, a color better known as puce.
It is a straggling thing when the sun is out, but with nightfall, it stands straight up and emits such a perfume the whole garden is laden.
It comes easily from seed, but the plants do not always reach the flowering stage. During dampish summers, it is apt to go off with the “wilts” like cabbage, to which it is related.
A brown about whose color there can be no doubt is the wallflower, although here again, it is a blend of burgundy, bronze, and rust. The centers are gold.
For us, the wallflower proved “picky.” First, they got too much moisture and went off with the “spots.”
Then we took note of the name and set small plants at the top of the double rock wall, laying the tap roots in scree among porous sandstone.
There they bloom year after year, smelling sweetly by day, even sweeter by night when the gardener’s prowling flashlight sends the field mice tumbling backward into their burrows. Pausing, the gardener hears nothing but the whisper of petals on petals in the night wind.
44659 by Dorothy Hammar