{"id":2101,"date":"2006-11-14T14:20:25","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T19:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2017-07-18T12:28:08","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T17:28:08","slug":"cosmos-bipinnatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/plant-highlights\/cosmos-bipinnatus\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmos bipinnatus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first autumn I lived in Japan, before the equinox flowers<\/a> bloomed, a colleague and his wife took me to have my photo taken in a field of kosumosu<\/i>. At the time my ignorance of flowers was on par with my ignorance of Japanese. I had no idea what kosumosu<\/i> were even when I saw them. I guessed that they weren’t Japanese because the word was written in the Japanese script used for foreign words.<\/p>\n

\"photo:
Cosmos bipinnatus. Kuju Flower Park. Oita-ken. Japan. My introduction to cosmos.<\/i><\/p>\n

In fact, cosmos are from my part of the world–native to the American southwest and Mexico and sometimes called Mexican aster. Like another Mexican native poinsettas<\/a>, cosmos bloom as the days are shortening. Flowers that can bloom as the days are grow shorter make perfect sense in Texas because fall is an opportune growing season.<\/p>\n

Most sources I’ve read said that cosmos like heat and drought–they must be talking relatively. They’ve always performed best in the cooler fall for me (86F today). But the field of flowers photographed in Japan was probably planted just after the summer solstice for our September photo op. As for water, the ones that got the most during their early days in September are the ones that are producing the largest flowers now. Luckily, they like poor soil. My garden is all about poor soil.<\/p>\n

Cosmos are among the easiest flowers to grow from seed. The seeds are large and they germinate quickly so they make excellent flowers for children to plant. Butterflies also love them. The monarchs have been completely ignoring the Asclepias<\/i> in favor of the cosmos this week. I’ve seen two types of swallowtales sucking on them as well.<\/p>\n

Floridata<\/a> warns us to check with out local extension office to see if they are invasive. Apparently they are a problem in Missouri<\/a>. Unlike other annuals I’ve grown from seed, cosmos has rarely self-sown in my yard. It’s the only fall-blooming annual in the meadow so I don’t mind buying a new packet of seeds each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"photo:
2006-11-14. Cosmos bipinnatus. Austin, TX.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5381,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/5381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}