Cultivars

I love native plants and communities, but appreciate gardens, too, where we mix plants from all of the world (hopefully reasonably suited for the site). Some gardens are naturalistic; others are fantastical. I appreciate those that have a naturalistic inclination, to be sure.

Receiving a catalog today from a well-respected purveyor of plants (because I'd recently joined a professional association), I flipped through the pages. It was full of the sort of plants I hate - strangely variegated cultivars, gaudy flower selections, and oddly dwarfed specimens. I DO know many gardeners enjoy such things, but I'm not one of them.

This poor sweetgum, a wonderful fast-growing native tree here in the Eastern U.S. that some people fuss about because of its fruits (spiny, seed-rich fruits favored by American Goldfinches), has been turned into a rather dreadful pencil-shaped thing (I won't name the cultivar to protect the source).

I'm quite fond of sweetgums myself, but this one -- I don't think so.