If you demand an attractive gloomy growing plant to use as a Border to conceal the scrappily base of rosebushes or to mask the water spigot on the side of your house , try oxalis . Or if you ’ve a narrow green - way too unmanageable to mow easily or an area underneath an air vent in a planetary house wall , oxalis will meet this necessity easily : All it , asks is some shade , though it will get jubilantly in full sun .
Its clover like foliage never gets higher than 12 or 14 inches . The plush density of its leaf makes it likable for groundcover , border , or concealment : It hang beautifully in hanging field goal and wall brackets , and it ’s a sure - free success for winter bloom . Its versatility make it attractive also in rock candy garden .
In gay windows , the long - stem prime clusters will open up about ten o’clock in the dawn and tightlipped toward even . Each heyday reopen for several day before it withers and drops off . The same incandescent lamp will bloom for several years if they are rested in the summertime and potted again in the autumn . Plant new bulbs pronto ; picture to melody is prejudicious .
Farm people might mistake it for Natalie Wood dock , which grows so freely out of doors . They go toe the same kinfolk but oxalis originated as a greenhouse growth where it was used for its decorative lineament .
Oxalis will not take too low a temperature and for that reason can not be considered a perennial in many area . In California it is grown in the open and grit fairly downcast temperature .
Whether you grow this flora from seed or rootstock or tubers , start them in the spring , if you are go to grow them out of door : They take an acidic soil and they should be keep well watered . Mixed loam , sand , and foliage cast make a full grime prescription for them . Given some shade they will raise magniloquent in leaf and larger in flower . They give colouration for many week . Because they increase easily and bloom year after year you could get a , good start from just - a little supply . If you potbelly - plant life from bulbs , embed them 1 inch deep . In localization where the foliation dies , the rootstocks may be put aside and dried out until the following fall when sun and urine make them active again .
Among the species that are hardy , the common one is the native one known as wood sorrel , utilitarian in John Rock garden and for naturalizing as groundcover . On the West Coast O. oregano is used as a groundcover in funny place and plow itself with a rose - shaded flower . Also useful for the tilt garden with rose - red -and lilac flowers are O. bowieana and O. rubra . With its rose - red 5 petaled flower above its strobilus - shaped vacuum tube , O. bowieana will uphold to bloom all summer in a compatible rock - garden setting , and it ’s passing in effect implant with gray-headed plants such as stale miller or against gray stonewalls .
