Garden Foliage in January

For those of you who caught my last Tree Following post, you may remember the question of the folded Palo Verde leaves in the afternoon shade.  I received a good deal of response as it was a surprising feature: a tree that closes its leaves at night...  And since I found it a fascinating subject, I decided to look just a little more closely at it for today's Garden Bloggers' Foliage Day.

First of all, many thanks to those of you who gave me the name of this feature: nyctinasty.  Varied hunts across Google tell me that the term applies to both leaves and flowers.  Botonists remain uncertain of the advantages of this activity.  In the case of leaves, the action occurs particularly in the Legume family, of which the Palo Verde (Parkinsonia florida) is a member, along with a number of other useful desert species.

Parkinsonia florida exhibiting nyctinasty, the folding of leaves for the night

As Kris mentioned in her comment, it also occurs in Calliandras; here is my new Calliandra californica "Baja Red" as afternoon shade falls across my east-facing garden.

But it also occurs in species from more temperate zones.  One article referred to such common plants as French beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and clover (Trifolium repens).  So I began to wonder, what else am I missing?

At present I am growing one legume more normally associated with cooler climes, namely, sweet peas.  Here are the leaves in afternoon shade.

I am not sure whether this is nyctinasty or not.  Certainly the lower leaves are still wide open, so the upper may be merely new growth?  Looking at the pictures, I suspect so although my impression was otherwise out in the garden.

Any opinions and other observations welcome!  I will have to go out in the morning and double check what the upper leaves are doing then.

That is about the best I can do at the moment!

Elsewhere in the garden...

Yesterday I made a trip to Elgin's Nursery - a real 50 minute one way trip to a real nursery.  And most of the plants I came home with are worth looking at for their foliage alone.

Aloe "Blue Elf"...

...the young tree (or large shrub) Vauquelinia californica, known as Arizona Rosewood...

...and especially Opuntia "Gumbi" - not something on my to-buy list, but I simply couldn't pass it up!  So far as I have noticed, this is an Opuntia with few spines and few or no glochids, and look at those wonderful colours!  I dug a hole for it this morning, meaning to get it in the ground immediately, then remembered that I have been advised to give cactus species a week's drying out before planting.  Gumbi is now sitting in his hole - still in his pot, waiting.

In addition to yesterday's purchase, there is another small aloe in the garden now.  This is the very small "Crosby's Prolific".  Sure enough, I can already count three pups on this tiny plant, which can't be more than six inches high at present, if that.

And a final set of leaves that I am intrigued by at the moment: Cerinthe major "Purpurea", which I managed to grow from seed (never my strong point) and am wishing well and floriferous.  I've never seen these before, let alone seen them in bloom, but I've loved the pictures for years.  High time I tried growing them!  The foliage feels rather succulent and is a lovely greeny-grey colour in full daylight.

Nyctinasty and assorted succulents for this month's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!  To see what foliage others have been looking at this January, check out Christina's My Hesperides Garden...

Weather Diary: Partly cloudy; High: 72 F (22 C)/Low: 41 F (5 C)