TRICK PIC! 
ECCE ECHIUM! 
SHOW YOUR COLORS! 
(Continued from front page) 
yellow bands down the center of 
each petal and purple blotches 
on the inner surface. Set well 
down in good rich soil they will 
grow to a height of five to six 
feet. A splendid companion for 
this is L. rubrum with crimson in- 
stead of yellow bands. Sprekelia 
formosissima is another spectacular 
bulb. A native of Mexico and a 
member of the Amaryllis family, 
its flower is large and of odd for- 
mation, vivid crimson in color, 
suggesting Orchids to most people 
meeting it for the first time. Then 
there is the yellow Calla. Both 
spotted foliage and blooms are 
showy. 
IT’S TIME FOR... 
(Continued from opposite page) 
phosphate, liquid fertilizer or what- 
have-you, but vary the diet. All 
chlorotic foliage may be greened 
immediately with a couple of feed- 
ings, two weeks apart, of Sulphate 
of Ammonia and lrontone—two 
tablespoons of former and three 
of latter dissolved in one gallon 
of water, and one gallon of mix- 
ture to each medium-sized plant. 
Pictures in seed catalogues and nursery adver- 
tisements in general, invariably have one thing in 
common: they show the largest,’ gaudiest Zinnias, 
or the most florescent evergreen shrub, or the old- 
est handsomest specimen tree in the country to 
sell a packet of seeds or a gallon can. This month 
the "It's Different!’ slogan of Evans & Reeves 
really holds true for the photograph accompany- 
ing this plant-of-the-month article shows what you'll 
find in the can now... and the area devoted 
to the leaden March sky (some eight or ten feet 
of it!) is where the wonder will take place! 
This boldly foliage biennial, Echium pininana, 
is a rarély found member of an extensive family 
hailing from the Canary Islands which is also repre- 
sented here (more commonly) by E. fastuosum. Be- 
tween now and July this tropical-appearing Echium 
will rise skyward in a swirl of rough lanceolate leaves 
from which will shoot gigantic spires of blue flower, 
the foot-wide spikes themselves accounting for more 
than half of the ultimate ten to twelve feet this 
fantastic plant will achieve this summer. 
A favored location for Echium pininana may 
be a hot, arid, well-drained corner or a spot over- 
looking the ocean where it thrives within range of 
the salt spray, but it will not be in the inland val- 
leys where the magnificent promise of this plant is 
not realized. Those which we offer now in one gal-* 
lon containers ($1.25) will flower this, their first 
summer, next year, and the following year will have 
reseeded to continue the cycle. 
With the current enthusiasm for emphatic folli- 
age in contemporary landscaping and the need for 
similarly striking flowering material as a counter- 
balance, Echium pininana is an arresting answer 
to what to put in the summer sun as a color accent. 
| THEVETIA 
(Continued from front page) 
temperatures of 25 degrees—and nary a leaf was 
damaged. We are encouraged to hope that this 
prize will in fact flourish wherever its country cousin, 
Thevetia nereifolia, will. This latter, the so-called 
“yellow oleander'’ is an old timer, long grown in 
California gardens, but cannot compare with its 
more handsomely endowed relative in beauty, sta- 
ture or rate of growth. 
We hope your reaction to Thevetia thevetioides 
will be as enthusiastic as our own for this sun lover, 
unkown in commercial listings and, indeed in col- 
lections of botanic gardens throughout the tropics, 
prior to our introduction,’ represents not only the 
end result of trials of this subject in our gardens 
but also those of a score of other possibilities 
which have been discarded as wanting only after 
much time and effort in our constant search for 
worthy additions to southern California gardens. 
In one size only, one gallon containers, $5. 
