… The red buds of Pink Sargent crabapple open to pink flowers, followed by red fruit. Crabapples are small flowering trees that provide a showy display in the spring landscape for 1 to 2 weeks. In addition to the eye-catching buds and flowers, their foliage, habit, and fruit make them attractive plants …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… that bleeds outward onto the overlapping, slightly ruffled petals. It blooms from mid summer to fall with huge flowers measuring 7-8 “ across. The leaves are very similar to maple leaves in shape. The flowers are produced in the leaf axils from the top to the bottom of the plant instead of just at the top as in some other hibiscus cultivars. The …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… Tree peonies differ from bush peonies in that their woody stems do not die down to the ground in winter. Derived from the Chinese moutan peony more than 1400 years ago, they usually grow to 5’ tall, so are more accurately classified as shrubs than trees. They bloom from April to May, live a long time, and get better with age. Plant them in the fall in partial shade, prune …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… Tree peonies differ from bush peonies in that their woody stems do not die down to the ground in winter. Derived from the Chinese mountain peony over 1400 years ago, they usually grow to 5’ tall, so are more accurately classified as shrubs than trees. They bloom from April to May, live a long time, and get better with age. Plant them in the fall in partial shade, prune …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… I’ve stated before, we in the education department of the Chicago Botanic Garden are committed to helping parents and teachers find great projects that teach students how plants sustain and … or an entire class. Let’s begin by thinking about tomato seeds. Cut open a tomato and try to pick out a single seed. Go ahead and try it, I’ll wait. These tomato seeds glisten and mock me … a gelatinous substance that makes them slippery and difficult to handle. So the first question is, what purpose does the slimy coating serve? This is not the kind of blog post where I give …
Type: Blog
… a fair bit of brewing myself. Despite seemingly endless beer varieties, beer making boils down to just a few basic ingredients. So what’s really happening during the major steps in the brewing … grains are grasses with a special type of seed called a caryopsis . Inside a caryopsis is an embryo and a large, starchy food reserve (called the endosperm) that plays a key role in … carbohydrates will feed the yeasts during fermentation. The brewer doesn’t want the grain seed to completely germinate, though—if it did, the embryo would “eat” all of the food reserves, …
Type: Blog
… Chicago Botanic Garden turns its educational programming attention—as well as its decorations—to the only plants that stay green through the season: the evergreens. We teach class after class of school children how to identify different kinds of evergreens by their needles and cones. It’s a lesson in … the words “evergreen” and “conifer” —they are not the same thing!—and every year, someone is confused. I blame Christmas trees. The “Christmas Tree” intersects both of the sets …
Type: Blog
… you may find this plant: You can’t miss the orange flowers of this jewelweed, but look closer to find the seedpod hanging below and to the right of the third blossom. Its scientific name is Impatiens capensis , and jewelweed has some interesting features that make it worth getting …
Type: Blog
… This pyramidal evergreen tree needs full sun to partial shade and moderate moisture conditions to reach a height of about 8 feet. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… This pyramidal evergreen tree needs full sun to partial shade and moderate moisture conditions to reach a height of about 4 feet. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
