my favorite plants

Hello, reader.  How are you doing?  A housemate asked me what my favorite plants are.  They had mentioned the rhododendrons are blooming, and I admitted that I am not too keen on rhododendrons.

“What plants do you like?” my housemate asked.  We were on a walk, nearing home.  I didn’t have much time to answer.

“Uh, just about everything else,” I said.

But that is not true.  I have a few hated plants.  I explained my hatred of oleander, those fantasies I used to have of digging it up in the night.

Here’s a list of my favorite plants.  Please look at this list, if you care to.  Probably I forgot a ton.

favorite plants

naked ladies – amaryllis belladonna

dudleya farinosa
dudleya brittonii
dudleya nubigena

every oak esp coast live oak, island live oak
all conifers esp redwoods
Santa Cruz Island ironwood
bay laurel

lotus

California poppies
opium poppies
lupin esp harlequin and butter
locoweed

eucalyptus
ginkgo
fruit trees esp avocado and citrus
nut trees

all roses
society garlic – tulbaghia violacea

tree collard, any perennial brassica
yerba buena – clinopodium douglasii
walking onions
purple bell peppers
tomatoes
tomatillos

all mints
all sages
parsley
rosemary
basil
tulsi
lemon verbena
oregano
lavender
lemon balm

amaranth

all peas
all beans
corn
grains

passionfruit
all grapes

coreopsis
ceanothus
chasteberry

yarrow

honeysuckle
fuschias
asters

duckweed
clovers
snow plant – sarcodes sanguinea
dodder

anise
mustard
radish
teasel
thistles

corpse flower
carnivorous plants
mistletoe

creosote
sagebrush
yucca
joshua tree
agaves
saguaro
jojoba
nopal

ephedra
pickleweed

non-plants

all fungus
lichen
all seaweeds esp kelp, giant kelp, nori

hated plants

oleander
pampasgrass
ivy
impatients and other cheap colorful unimaginative

feelings

What do you think about plants, reader?  Do you have strong feelings about these plants and others?  How long is your list of hated plants?

I thought society garlic was an agapanthus–I’m grateful to learn it’s something else entirely.

There are emotional reasons I love these plants.  Some are sacred to me.  I associate them with a place, a time period, a person I loved, such as my mom with roses.  There are some olfactory reasons too.  Good smelling plants matter to me, touching deep memories and connecting me to the same plants over time.

Some of these plants I associate with when I worked at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.  Always grateful for that place where I absorbed a ton of plant knowledge which gave me the information to strengthen my love for plants.  I can love way harder, the more I know.

Yes, I’d like a master’s degree in dudleyas.  They are not just pretty succulents–they are my heart.  My inner life looks like dudleyas, feels like dudleyas.  They make me love green again.