If Giacometti had designed perennials instead of sculpture,
this would be one of his greatest:
Asian burnet is so distinctive, to elongatedly elegant, that I have it right by the path to my back door: It's a star, worthy of such prime real estate. Strong straight-arrow, nearly leafless flower stems shoot up almost five feet.
They filigree the foreground, so are the perfect front detail to embellish long-distance views.
The leaves themselves are almost all at the base, and they are a narrow ferny bunch. (The latin is Sanguisorba tenuifolia, where tenuifolia means, literally, "narrow leaves". Think "tenui" like "tenuous" or "attenuated": all mean, one way or another, narrow, thin, stretched.)

The quirky pendant bottle-brush flowers are the Dr. Seuss touch.
Intriguing and even comical, they are the dancing levity atop all this startlingly-severe and anorexic geometry.
Normally in burgundy, pink, or red, this white-flowered form keeps elegance at least in coloring if not in habit. As with all the burnets, tangential pollinators like flies and small wasps are the chosen few, not the usual mainstream bees. Even here, then, the perennial is proud in its iconoclasm.

Now that we're, uh, budding experts on pot look-alikes, this one is too easy, too crude by half.
False Hemp is a huge—to eight feet high, six across—perennial for huge borders like this one, or for to-the-front focal statements in smaller plantings when you want to razz the cops.
At a glance (or if you're toked up already), there is something druggy or at least doubtful about False Hemp.

The feathery pinnate leaves are attractive, you have to admit. But aren't they smokeable? Or at least a bit too "native" for proper gardens? I don't know about the smoke-ability, but they sure aren't those of pot, which (we now know) are palmate instead—all the leaflets attach at the same point, like your fingers to your palm. False Hemp leaves are "pinnate" instead: all the leaflets attach to a long central spine.
Well what about those buds? They're suspicious for sure.
Wrong again: they lengthen into a veritable curtain of greenish whatevers.
Pot flower clusters stay distinctly upright, unlike pot users of course.
(Thank you www.Crocus.co.uk for the pair of full-flowered pix. We can always count on our fellow plant-geeks across the pond to be up on everything possible in the garden.)
But one thing you are right about: False Hemp is native of one of those druggy "stans": Pakistan. Guilt by association anyone?
Another druggy muddle here: that common name "False Hemp". Hemp is Cannabis sativa sativa is , a close cousin of the smokeable stuff, Cannabis sativa indica, but without the active ingredient to make smoking it worth the trouble. Police take note: It would be self-incriminating let alone embarrassing to get riled up over datisca: Would you be thinking datisca were pot because you were so buzzed already you couldn't tell the difference? Or just so ignorant you couldn't tell the difference?
If ever there were a latin name to use with complete innocence, at full volume, it's that of False Hemp: Datisca cannabina. Say it loud, say it proud: "duh-TISK-uh cuh-NAB-in-uh". As in: "Oh that? That's my Datisca cannabina. Lovely isn't it? So delicate—and so under-used." And then, a tisk-tisk-tisk will let everyone know that you, at least, are up to the challenge of bringing this unaccountably scarce and rarely-seen plant to wider reknown.
Last off-kilter detail: Crocus.co.uk gives a common name for datisca of "Bastard Hemp." Leave it to the Brits to work in the improper heritage angle too.
PS: I myself will be using Datisca in my vast Yellow Borders, when the economy picks up enough that I can convince myself, let alone my husband, that another $50 K spent on the garden is just the wise decision to make.

I think of this as the my "Mannerist" Solomon's Seal...
...similar in willful exaggeration to people in the paintings of that post-Renaissance,
pre-Baroque period: elongated and leggy.
Like the swan-necked couple in this Cellini salt cellar.
Or the impossibly (but deliciously) long-limbed Susanna in this creepy fresco by Allesandro Allori.

The learing gropiness of Susanna's two lechers is also part of this Solomon's Seal's appeal too. Don't you just want to get down and fondle each stalk?




Compared to more realistic (you could say, as they did in the 1500's, "classical") proportions
and perspectives of the Renaissance, Mannerist dimensions are wild indeed.
The Virgin in this Renaissance fresco by Raphael is so normally-proportioned that she seems positively Midwest and dumpy compared to Susanna. You might also call her wholesome and sane too, even happy. Depending on what you need out of your art (or your garden), that could either be a welcome stability or a boring stasis.

The plain species of Solomon Seal has the "classical" look too, yes?
Positively well-fed and comfortable with the world as it is. A conservative Solomon's Seal in all senses of the word.

But I digress: Back to this post's sizzling, anything-but-normal Solomon's Seal.
I'm using the picture from Plant Delights, where I got mine, and you can get yours too.

It's both taller than the normal SS, and each leaflet along the stem is excitingly, dramatically longer too. Plant Delights says it can get up to four feet tall; I'm still hoping for three, but the proportions are such that the plant looks taller than reality anyway. That's the Mannerist way!

PD also says it's only hardy down to Zone 6, but if you live in Vermont all that means is that you mulch like hell or you do what I do with so many of my tender-in-Rhode Island stuff: grow it in pots. Like all Solomon's Seals, this one is completely dormant all Winter. So it would be happy in a pot that's stashed in your basement by December and brought up into the chilly excitement—again, so Mannerist—of your early Spring.

Of course, you yourself need to have a taste for Mannerism before you'd want to start buying Mannerist plants. (You already do? Fabulous: I'm available for lunch next week.) And if not, no time like the present.

My garden never met a mullein that didn't love it. Heavy soil, high water table, plenty of sun, smaller things to smother, larger things to poke up through, plenty of bees to service the flowers. Yep, it's verbascum heaven here.
Here's Verbascum thapsiforme, doing everything it does best.
The huge leaves of the fast-growing rosette arch out over everything in reach, shading them and, then, as older leaves tire and flop to the ground, smothering them directly. This plant is self-mulching! (Click the picture to see how big the plant really is.) I'll yank off the leaves from this rosette that would otherwise flatten the dwarf hostas. All verbascums I'm interested it are true biennials, with foliage the first year, a titantic skyward-thrusting bloom structure the second, jillions of seeds that germinate readily, and a quick death for the mother plant when the blooming is done. (Verbascums I'm NOT interested in? There are demure knee-high "pretty" ones that are easy to raise for flower shows. Too lady-like I'm afraid.) Verbascums pop up where they will; cracks between stones are just as appealing as open spots in beds. Excess youngsters are easy to pull; I suppose you could transplant them too when they are really young, or it's really early in Spring. But they are tap-rooted, so you'd need to move quickly.
Some verbascums—verbasca?—have rosettes that are in themselves a show, with furry as well as colorful leaves; we'll see one in a later post. But the point, literally, of verbascums is more in the architectural flower-spikes, which for me, for Verbascum thapsiforme, can get eight feet tall.
Here's one au naturelle; thank you Wikipedia. Blooming can start later in June, and doesn't finish until (can it be? I'll document this season!) Labor Day and beyond.

There is never a day hot enough, a week dry enough, for the performance to flag. And thanks to the fuzzy leaves, no one—insect, bird, deer, rabbit—ever takes so much as one bite.
This is, in short and in tall, the perfect plant for all sunny Summer gardens.