Chicago Botanic Garden

The edible daylily continues to look amazing–so amazing that I can’t bring myself to eat the buds. Also, swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is flowering and remains a favorite plant of mine, looking quite aristocratic despite its name. After flowering, it forms spindles that split and release lots of seeds on little silky parachutes, so I recommend removing the spindles if you don’t want it to self-seed. And you have probably noticed that Japanese beetles have returned. A co-worker of mine visited the Chicago Botanic Garden last summer and noticed that there were no beetles on the roses. She asked a staffer what they did to control this awful pest, and was told that an army of volunteers went through every morning and picked off the beetles. I bat the beetles into a bowl of sudsy water. Without the suds, the beetles can fly out again. I am including a picture of a rose here, which is not exceptional either as a rose or as a picture, but I have noticed that this rose never is bothered by Japanese beetles. Perhaps if researchers could find out why this should be so, plant breeders could come up with more Japanese beetle-resistant roses. That would be wonderful!