Day In, Day Out, It’s a Blooming Attraction
The wonderful thing about an arboretum is that it looks different every time you visit. It’s like a car that has a new paint job whenever you drive it.
These days at the UC Irvine Arboretum, the Aloe reitzii has sprouted 6-inch-long orange and yellow flowers that look like parrots perched in the plant. The red flowers of the coral tree hang like bells, with seed pods that look like strands of pearls. The naked ladies -- yes, that’s a plant -- display their pink and white trumpet flowers.
Return tomorrow and things may have changed.
“Come back in the springtime,” Laura Lyons, the arboretum’s nursery manager said as she passed the dormant South African bulb garden, “and it will be knock-your-socks-off gorgeous.”
The UCI Arboretum, on the edge of campus, bordering San Joaquin Marsh, is especially known for its collection of South African plants. But in recent years, with a change of directors, the arboretum has worked to grow plants native to California and Baja California on its 13 acres. The garden holds more than 200 endangered species.
“The plants we have are things you’d rarely see, bringing out the extraordinary rather than emphasizing commonality,” said Peter Bowler, director of the arboretum. “We have plants that are in no other arboretum.”
An example is the mallow from Guadalupe Island, off Baja California. Before it was sprouted at UCI, it had never been grown from a seed in an arboretum, Bowler said.
One section spotlights such plants as the island snapdragon or St. Catherine’s lace from the Channel Islands, off the coast of California and Baja California.
The Baja and Sonoran Desert garden is where you’ll find cacti, like the cholla, agave and prickly pear, and the Boojum tree.
The newest section, the Otay Mountain garden, gathers plants from the mountains 15 miles east of San Diego. That isolated range is home to 37 rare and endangered plants found there almost exclusively, such as the Tecate cypress, Otay lilac and blue streamwort.
To make the Otay Mountain garden authentic, Lyons visited several quarries, looking for precise materials. “We wanted rock with the right look before we hauled in 10 tons of granite,” she said.
The arboretum began in 1964 as a nursery for plants being used to landscape the new UCI campus. It became an arboretum in 1977. Under the direction of Harold Koopowitz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, it developed a world-class collection of South African specimens.
Bowler said that when he took over seven years ago, he began to add to the collection of native species.
An isolated patch is reserved for the research of professors and students. One professor, for example, has worked on the differences in genetics of field mustard, the plant that canola oil comes from.
The arboretum also is in charge of the UCI Herbarium, where plants in the collection are pressed and dried. Copious notes are kept on where the plant was found in the wild, sometimes its location on the global positioning system, who collected it and other plants growing with it.
The herbarium, available by appointment only, is used extensively by molecular biologists trying to understand plant differences, Bowler said.
Something is always blooming at the arboretum, providing an ever-changing palette of colors and smells. The zygopetalum, a purple orchid, will soon bloom, spreading its sweet perfume.
“People think of springtime as garden time,” Lyons said. “They don’t think of a garden as a 365-day attraction.”
This time of year, late summer to fall, is when the sunflower Helianthus gracilentus blooms in the California garden and the Brunsvigia littoralis flowers in the South Africa section.
As the year moves into fall, the California fuchsia blooms. The South African Aloe dichotoma blooms in the winter, followed by Lachenalia viridiflora, which opens up in winter to early spring.
Springtime brings the Fremontodendron californica and the Matilija poppy in the California garden and the Babiana rubrocyanea in the South Africa section.
Summer is time for Gander’s pitcher sage and the Otay lotus in the California section, along with many of the bulbs from Natal and Transvaal in South Africa.
Lyons has worked at the arboretum for 12 years. “I’m always seeing something new,” she said. “There’s always a surprise. Something might bloom for the first time. Each season there are new things to see.”
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The arboretum is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is free. In addition, the arboretum holds a number of activities. Sept. 27, the Orange County chapter of the California Native Plant Society holds a sale of indigenous plants. The Fall Art and Flower Festival is Oct. 18. The Fall Orchid Festival is Nov. 1-2 and includes lectures and demonstrations.
