Lily-of-the-valley is sensational to cut—both foliage and flowers—but it can be a patchy scroffle in the garden. Soil to dry? Too much sun? Who-knows-what bug is hungry? Then the foliage gets brown-edged and chewed-through. And besides, the plant goes dormant in Summer anyway, so even if it does do you the favor of retreating underground, then you're left with a weed-friendly bare patch.
LotV is great for an out-of-the-way spot, where it can be an ankle-biting cutting garden. Or as just a foot or two, here and there, in any garden you need to look at beyond Memorial Day. The plant's sheer persistence even in the less-than-optimal conditions that make it so unattractive, coupled (I guess) with the mooshy-romantic "Lily of The Valley" name, have made the species itself far too popular. Even if it doesn't look quite like you'd hoped, there it is, year after year. And you can still get an adorable bouquet or two from it. Lily of the Valley is one of our most cherished eyesores.
In gardens where you need to look beyond an appealing (to some) name, and bring a frank, clinical, even cynical judgment to bear on if a given plant is really, truly, worth a damn the second after the flowers fade, Lot V doesn't cut the mustard. Unless, that is, you grow this one:
From the moment the leaves spear-up in early Spring, they aren't just the ten-millionth Lily of the Valley leaf in your state. They are striped, and with rhythm and regularity. And, so to speak, a narrative arc: They start from the same spot at the base of the leaf, and merge into the same spot at the tip of the leaf. It's a controlled performance, with none of the wild-man cavorting of striated Solomon's Seal.)
The flowers themselves are (I admit) lovely, but they are a bonus not the only thing worth a damn about the entire plant. My colony is still young—I think this is it's third Spring—and I only sprang for three of them to start with. Controlled performances, with narrative arc too, don't come cheap. And it's already clear that, at least for me, this beautiful show isn't from a plant that has any prowess as a groundcover. Yes, the species can colonize so thickly it's a decent (but not great) grondcover. But striped leaves mean a more modest performance. It must take a lot of energy—and should—to bring narrative arc to each and every leaf. So I'll weed my patch of yellow-striped Lot V, and ponder if there's a tinier-still, but much more effective, groundcover it would consent to cohabit with. I need to respond in kind, and bring to it the controlled performance it's bringing to me. The gauntlet is thrown, or at least tossed. Let the games begin.

Solomon's Seals are a tribe of several dozen hardy woodland perennials, many of which can find happy and attractive homes in every garden, woodlandish or not. I'm embarrassed to admit that, so far, I only have four. Each is a doozy, but still, only four. I'll get to work on this I promise.
Yesterday I introduced the midget of the family, Dwarf Solomon's Seal. (I'm realizing that it must not be P-C to refer to any small-stature plant as "midget" this or that. It's "dwarf" this or that, thank you.)
Here's the next-taller one of my paltry (if high-toned) collection: Striped Solomon's Seal.
Get a load of those leaves! Striped isn't quite the right word, though. The white markings aren't uniformly sized or arrayed. Blotched? Nope, that's not it either. The latin is, for once, really helpful. This is Polygonatum x hybridum 'Striatum'. The leaves are striated: having lots of linear marks (or ridges of grooves) without getting into the details of how similar one mark might be to another. Striation, then, is the liberal version of striped; stripes are the conservatives in the striation family.


In my gardens, at least, I'm the big-tent dictator. As long as you're interesting and energetic, I don't care about your private life or your politics. Stripes as well as striates: Come on in!

Striated Solomon's Seal does tend to put out the occasional all-green stem; just cut any off so the colony maintains its aesthetic purity.  Nonetheless, it's a particularly welcome Seal, in that the leaf color is seriously more showy (if you like that sort of thing) than the next Solomon's Seal we'll look at, the "Variegated" S-S. It just has an oh-so-tasteful white border around the leaves. As we'll see in tomorrow's post.

As I mentioned in "Feisty", the One-Minute Max for May 13, dwarf Solomon's seal doesn't let its lack of height diminish its authority, its territoriality. First, that "height."I understand that really giant dwarf Solomon's seal can soar to five even six inches. Mine is about half that, whether from culture or luck or youth I don't yet know. Maybe this is a dwarf-dwarf clone, or just a young colony (this is its third year).
I love how it seems to crowd up against the edge of the bluestone walkway. It can't creep underground far enough to get to the other side of the walkway (which is even feet wide), which perhaps will only increase the sense of intention and urgency on this side.
As the colony matures, the growth gets dense enough to work as respectable groundcover. And the outward creep continues too; I suppose in a decade I'll have it five feet wider. Given that everything else within radius is many times as tall, that would be just ducky.

And how did I not know this? The flowers of some peonies / all peonies / only this one peony close at night. Here's Emily Scout just an hour after I shot her for today's One-Minute Max.
Whoops, "Shot her"? That's certainly a violent double entendre. What about "Here's Emily Scout just an hour after I 'Flipped' her"? Worse still. You don't know Emily like I know Emily.
Last try: "Here's Emily Scout an hour after my 'One-Minute Max' on her." Oh never mind. The petals have folded back together for the night. Emily is asleep, as soon will I myself be. Separate beds of course.

Now that I've got her on my mind, my Emily Scout peony—yours too I'm sure—is proving to be a fast-moving girl. Last night, she was drawn demurely together for the night. This morning, though, she was up and at 'em; by the time I'd thought to take another picture, at noon, dear Emily was quite splayed and droopy in the unusual early-May 80's.

Weren't we all.
The days are late by now, so Emily would have normally been open past 7. But at 4:30, heavy clouds rolled in for some showers. Rain is a change of plans, and she furled before the first drops.
Indeed, all the Emilies were tucked in safely.
As Scarlett O'Hara says, "Tomorrow is another day." Ah Emily, I'll be up early myself, not least to greet you properly. There can't be more than a day or two more of your dramatic and, uh, quotidian performance. Respect must be paid.
Which reminds me: There's a peony called Scarlett O'Hara, and I've got her too. (Despite the "scarlett" thing, she's happy in the Pink Borders.) Scarlett is later than Emily—no surprise there—so I won't see her bloomers I mean blooms for a few weeks.
I wonder if she's as eager a performer.

Peony flowers are—even to me, a serious foliage freak—a gift from the gods. But some peonies that still do flower are even more engaging on account of their leaves. Paeonia lutea 'Ludlowii' is at the top of the list. This is a tree peony, with woody stems that live year-to-year, and a large shrubby habit. Ludlow's can get six feet tall and wide, and more. But even if it were a dwarf, or even if it only got three leaves a season not (on old plants) a hundred or two, this would still be a peony to lust over, a peony to crave, a peony that you must-have.
Here's an adolescent bush at a client's garden, probably six feet wide and almost five tall.
As you'll see from a post in early May, the leaves are large and quite ferny, giving you that lacy-foliage look but much larger than any hardy fern could provide. (Peonies are one of those blessed rare tribes that do better with cold winters and cool summers. Eat your heart out North Carolina.)
Mine is but a pip, with only a handful of short canes that will produce, oh, ten or twelve leaves this entire season.
Just you wait and see how thrilling those leaves are.