Color - Presumptive and Descriptive Miscellany (and Some Stuff Regarding Ecology)
“Fall Colors”—strong, saturated, simple to complex but never pastel, running from dark green to yellow to orange and red and purple and brown, but no blue except sky and water, and no white (or mixtures therewith, i.e. pastels). All this applies both to the north-temperate cliché with themes of harvest and autumn foliage and to tropical scenes that are so easily achievable in the warmer regions of California and that come bursting into their own here only from about August to October, with gaudy flowers against a background of bright-green foliage.
There is also considerable overlap between these two categories, both in nature (mainly in eastern North America, very little in California) and in the garden; this shows up among the herbaceous plants, annual and perennial, many of which happen to be composites (sunflower, Jerusalem artichoke, zinnia, echinacea, rudbeckia, cosmos, tithonia, dahlia, montanoa, marigold, chrysanthemum, etc.) although there are others, notably corn, pumpkins, winter squashes and gourds, amaranth, morning-glory, nasturtium, begonia, impatiens, and petunia.
All of these require water during the summer growing season, which is why some of them occur natively well north into the eastern U.S., but not in California.
The tropical trees and shrubs, on the other hand, do not penetrate nearly so far northward, either in the wild or in the garden, because their main barrier is not summer drought but winter cold. The situation is therefore reversed from that of the herbaceous plants; very few shrubs and trees with close tropical affinities occur natively in the eastern and northern parts of the country, but a great many are at home in our limited warm-winter regions, particularly Florida, southern Texas, and the low southern deserts of the southwest. And also unlike the tropical herbs, which can be grown far outside their natural range by “just adding water”, the tropical trees, shrubs and woody vines can never be grown outdoors except in those few favored areas with warm-enough winters, and in this, of course, we Californians are uniquely blessed, so that our “fall color” can also include Bougainvillea, Hibiscus, Poinsettia, Tibouchina, Brugmansia, passion vines, bignonias, fuchsias, and on and on.
“Winter Colors”—traditionally red (berries), white (snow), and deep green (conifers), but obviously not a formula achievable in California except well up in the mountains. For us, mainly blue sky, green grass, white clouds.
“Spring Colors”—a time mostly for pastels, set among the usual blue sky, white clouds, fresh green grass and new leaves, the great profusion of flowers that adorn the season, both wild and cultivated, have a striking tendency to bright yellow (mustard, oxalis, daffodils, monolopia, lasthenia) [Do a separate paragraph on the early spring-yellow phenomenon), lavender, pink and white (fruit trees and their ornamental counterparts, . . .owl’s-clover etc.), with orange poppies for contrast, and a whole range of blues and violets coming on a little later (lupines, phacelia, gilias etc.), . . . brighter magentas and pinks of clarkia come later. (Only plants from the southern hemisphere break the early spring rule to any degree—fiery aloes and blinding iceplants from South Africa.)
“Summer Colors”—for us, drab dark-green trees and straw-colored grasslands, relieved by patches of yellow tarweed, magenta clarkias. Contrast between wild and garden is greatest in California in summer and fall.
It seems no coincidence that the several color-combinations that typify each season look so harmonious to our eyes. Theories, anyone? This natural “good taste” even seems to pervade the plants themselves. Take any variable species or related group of species and look for examples.
The genus Clarkia (farewell-to-spring) limits itself to variations on the theme of lavender to magenta to pink to almost red (mixed in various charming combinations and with white for contrast)—admirable restraint for such a stunner of a genus, and with so many members (about 60 species at last count). Another noble genus, not native to the Americas but so what, does an equally impressive job with yellow, orange, and white. The well-known circumboreal genus of Iris goes a step further, white and yellow and also blue, violet, and purple in various combinations, but tastefully leaving out the orange-to-red part of the spectrum. Chrysanthemums and tulips come in red, white, and yellow, but no blue, ------ in red and blues and purple but no yellow. Castilleja red to pink and yellow to orange, but no blue or violet.
Examples go on and on of plants that cover a harmonious two-thirds or so of the spectrum, leaving the ther third blank as if on purpose to kep from any chance of clashing with itself. A few exceptions prove the ruel, mostly in old, large, widely distributed genera like Clematis?, “Brodiaea” (sensu lato).
In general, the rarest colors in flowers range from blue to green, no doubt because they fail to contrast very conspicuously from the background of green foliage. [Some nice groupings of color: red, orange, yellow; lavender, pink, blue, white, yellow (or any combination of these except yellow and white); and red and green]
White is common in night-blooming flowers, which are often also very fragrant, the better to draw the moths and sometimes bats that pollinate them.
Hummingbird-pollinated plants generally have tubular red-to-yellow flowers without much if any scent at all, since birds navigate by sight not smell (the turkey vulture is one interesting exception, but its olfactory interests are hardly floral).
Bees and many other pollinating insects are sensitive to ultraviolet wavelengths and so are able to respond to certain floral “color” patterns that we can’t see at all.
Some floral colors are diluted with white (i.e. “pastel”) but not all. Saturated colors are common, especially violet and red through orange to yellow, but pastel colors are confined to a more limited range: pink is the most common, and variations from this through magenta, and lavender to powder blue are also common (as is white), but pastel “tints” in the rest (majority!) of the spectrum are rare—how many pale orange, pale yellow, pale green or pale cyan flowers have you seen? They exist, but . . .
[Drawings]
