If you truly love them, Donald Marcotte would like to hear from you. Check out his Spotlight article below.

Don is President of the Coushatta Camellia Society, which has two upcoming show/sales:

* Sat., Jan. 16, 1-4pm, at First Christian Church, 3500 N. Loop 335W, Conroe.
* Sat., Feb. 6, 1-4pm, Katy & E. Don Walker Sr. Education Center, 1400 - 19th St., Huntsville

Don's particularly excited right now as he just found an exclusive yellow camellia called 'Kagirobi' at the Houston Garden Center in Conroe. (Pictured below, it won't be available at the Coushatta sale this year, but maybe in future years...?) 

* Sasanqua camellias have shiny, dark-green, small leaves with 2-4" wide flowers. Mature heights range from 2 or 3 feet to 12 feet, depending on the variety.

* Japonicas have larger leaves, larger later-blooming flowers and are usually 6 to 12 feet tall. Japonicas are also a bit hardier than sasanquas but both do well here. In fact, both can live for literally hundreds of years -- tho you'll probably never know if yours do or not!

Increasingly around town, in-ground poinsettias are proving impressive perennials that present beautiful red leaves usually right on cue, before they die back for the rest of the winter. Ed reports the only problem he has is with the somewhat brittleness of poinsettia stalks. He prunes regularly in spring when new foliage appears to help:

1. remaining stalks grow thicker and stronger and

I thought the upward-pointing daturas were called angel trumpets and downward-pointing brugmansias used to be called devil trumpets.

It was actually the other way around. Upward-pointing daturas were called devil trumpets (looking up from below, as it were) and the downward-pointing brugmansias were always called angel trumpets (looking down from their high point).

Over the years, tho -- gardeners being upbeat, positive-thinking souls -- both flowers became angel trumpets. The name datura comes from the Hindi word for "thorn flower." Brugmansias are named for the Dutch naturalist Sebald Justinus Brugmans

Actually they were both called daturas at first. Then some became brugmansias. They both belong to the plant family Solanaceae. Brugmansia tend to be shrubs, or small trees, with downward pointing flowers. Daturas' upward pointing flowers appear on lower, more shrub-like growth and the fruit has spines.

Can't go by that tho. In our subtropical climate, the usually lower-growing daturas can grow quite large. And periodically the "experts" reclassify various ones on both sides! Don't you love it when even the experts can't agree?  Who else would tell you these things?

(see end of column). Email me at lazygardener@sbcglobal.net and I'll send you a free copy of the Rain Garden Design Anita helped me to include in this book (now available as a pdf on CD only).