To refresh your memory, here was your Mystery Plant #1 challenge:
This was taken on New Year’s Day 2020. Little did I know that nearly ten months later the world would still be in the grip of COVID. Also, a couple months after this was taken Fort Worth was hit with the worst freeze since the ’80s. Those sticks had to be cut to the ground because they all froze. I thought the plant was dead. But within a month it was showing signs of life:
And here is the plant in late September, 2021:
This is a Saliva ‘Amistad’. It’s a pretty interesting plant, and amazing for how fast it grows. It seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger all through the Spring, Summer, and even Fall. But for as relentless as it grow and grows, as soon as frost hits a huge chunk of the plant dies. Cut off the dead chunk and it starts budding again, until the freeze of the century comes along and it dies back to the ground. Then, just when you’re about to dig the think out of the ground, you see green shoots. I’m disappointed in the “Friendship” plant, however and I’ll be ripping it out of the ground this winter. It sure adds a splash of bright purple to the garden, but it’s too big for this space and most of the year it looks pretty leggy. The flowers and leaves get denser as the summer goes on, and it’s a real Zen exercise to keep cutting off the thousands of dead flowers and stems to promote new, denser growth. And then it dies back again at the first freeze in winter. Zen.
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