Phacelia sericea

I know this genus only as green manure and nectar-producing plants for bees! This one was a new acquaintance and not a bad one.

Green manure?  Good heavens, I know some people find this one easy to grow (not me, particularly) but that puts a whole different slant on it!  :D

Here's a couple more, and a shot of the place we found them in Kananaskis Prov. Park... the big scree fan at the end of our hike.  (This photo is from before their bloom time, however... very picturesque with the bands of snow, though!)

I've also failed with this plant in NW Oregon.  I've tried everything I can think of.  Last summer I had some big beautiful basal rosettes, but nothing came up this Spring.  They won't even survive in the cool greenhouse. 

Well I'm delighted to say that I finally got one to overwinter.  I see a lovely clump of foliage starting to poke up on mine.  Of course, that is no guarantee as I have had good-looking plants up and die in the middle of summer.  They seem a finicky creature.

As I told higher up in this thread I know this genus only as bee plants and nitrogen fertilizer. Grow it myself but never bothered to picture it. Here's one example:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phacelia_tanacetifolia_fax02.jpg

Now I have to look out for P. sericea to try it!

Phacelia sericea (Purple Fringe) is one of the most reliable native species growing in my high-altitude (10,000 feet) experimental gardens in the Colorado Rocky Mountains near Breckenridge, Colorado.  In the wild, it stands about 4 to 8 inches tall.  But in my garden, it will grow to a height of 10 to 14 inches.  It's deeply-cut, gray-green foliage indicates its drought tolerance and, indeed, it does well in my hottest, driest raised beds in full sun.  It requies no care -- no water or fertilizer -- and herbivores do not find its taste appealing.  It produces a prolific and reliable annual seed crop and willingly self-sows -- but not to the point of being a pest.  It seems to be a short-lived perennial of 3 to 4 years for any one individual plant.  However, because it reseeds so easily, there are never any gaps between the death of an old plant and the blooming of a new one. In my garden, it blooms around the end of May but in the wild, the bloom time begins at the end of June due to the deeper snowpack above 11,600 feet.  Photo #1 shows a small colony in my garden.  Photo #2 reveals details of the flowers in the tightly packed spike.

While purple is the most common color, a few years ago, I discovered a single, nearly-white specimen growing in the wild in the same general area as the purple ones -- but not in close proximity to them.  Photo #3 shows the whole plant; Photo #4 is a closeup of the flowers.  I have visited that site several times in the ensuing years but have never again seen that specimen or any new white-flowered ones.

This is also one of the plants I would like to success with at my summerhouse. Although the withe is a lovely plant I would prefere the purple because the rocky outcroppings there are so lightcolored that whiteflowered plants disappear.

Jane, what is the summer temperature regime at that altitude? I guess you get much sun?

Summer is mid-July to early August.  Daytime temperatures usually are no higher than 80 degrees F. -- and that's considered a very hot day!  Usually, it's around 72 to 75 degrees F. during that 3 to 4-week period. 

On either side of our "summer" is "spring" (June 15 is the last day of nighttime frost -- usually) and "fall" (a late-August frost is common but doesn't affect my cold-hardy species).  Between June 15 and about September 30, our nighttime temperatures range between about 33 and 48 degrees F. -- too cold to grow tomato plants in the open garden.  Also too cold for cucumbers, green beans, peppers, sweet corn and melons.  But lettuce, peas, cabbage, carrots, radishes, potatoes and strawberries do quite well.

In the "Green Season", we have abundant sunshine and a sky so intensely blue you have to squint to look at it.  I understand it's because of our thin atmosphere at 10,000 feet.  The sun is so strong that we saw snow melt into running water on our shed roof today -- and the ambient temperature was -1 degree below zero F!

I agree with you that the purple Phacelia sericea is more showy than the white one.  If I had seeds of the white one and if they would, indeed, produce white-flowering plants, I would put a couple of white ones in the middle of a nice clump of purple ones.  I think it would be a good conversation-starter.  What do you think?

Jane, I find your detailed notes on climate and average day/night summer temperatures both interesting and revealing.  The cool nights I believe are essential to the success and ease of many mountain and alpine plants.  When the "summer mugs" hit, as they did here this past summer (2010), with week after week of daytime temps 90-95 degrees F (with high humidity) and humid night temps that "might" dip below 80 F into the mid to upper 70s F (air-conditioner weather), plants don't get a cool relief from the daily heat and can become stressed, possibly succumbing to the topical "muggy" weather at lower elevations.

Your photos of P. sericea (I agree with Trond, the regular blue form is the best) show a plant worth every effort to try to cultivate. :D
The plants that Lori and Todd show, looks very compact and dwarf in plant size, but I suppose they might become larger under sultivation, as happened with the plants grown in your Breckenridge garden... even so, they are still delightful.

I did finally manage to grow this "in captivity" though it was short-lived, perhaps due to that unusual snow cover we had and the subsequent melt; it was a lankier plant, grown in regular soil, than the very compact ones I see in the alpine zone.
Even in the mountains, some plants can be quite large, depending on conditions.  Here's a big, burly plant from fairly high elevation (2000+ m though not alpine) in Kananaskis Country (eastern slope Rockies west of here):

Ooh, nice.  Those plants are Big, Burly, and Beautiful!  Such a wonderfully variable plant, I would grow it in any form.

Phacelia sericea has been on my want list. The lower elevation variety ciliosa occurs across northern Nevada it is taller with foliage that is not as hairy.

Ron Ratko (does he still have a seed list?) used to offer forms with flower stalks that were only a couple of inches high, and tight, ultra silvery cushions. They stayed that way in the troughs here. Until they died, that is.

Jane, thank you for your detailed description of your climate. It is very different from here, it is more similar to where we have our mountain cabin though and that's not very high (3000ft) compared to your place but we are further north! We have not that intense sunshine either but the days are longer. At the mountain cabin hoarfrost can occur every month and the winter starts in October, spring in May. Down here the spring starts February - with fallbacks - and lasts till May, the first birches leaf out in April. We seldom experience more than a few weeks with days above 75F in summer. In fact, we can have warmer weather at our mountain cabin than here by the coast where we live! The all time high in Norway  is 96F and 12 days in a row above 90F, and that were in the valley not far from our mountain cabin.

Regarding to combine the blue and white Phacelia I think that would work well. I prefere to use slightly different ones to identical ones. Then you can have better seeds and some thrive when others don't.

As I told Lori once, I have only grown annual Phacelia and then as green manure! I will try some perennial species now!

I am not surprised Phacelia is short lived for most people: there are only three perennial species I know of in the genus and dozens of annuals: I believe none of the perennial species are methusalahs.

Phacelia sericea is not purely alpine: it grows in the steppe areas of Northwest Colorado alongside cacti. That gives a hint (along with the fact that the bulk of its congeners are from hot deserts) that the plant is essentially a xerophyte.

No wonder it rots in wet climates! You will have to protect it somehow from excess water in the dormant season to succeed, and even then don't expect it to live forever!

The loveliest forms I have grown are from the Olympic Mts. of Washington: the rosettes are dazzlingly silver. The typical Colorado form is pretty nice. A single flower head produces thousands of seed, so there should be no problem in getting enough seed!

This is a common plant throughout much of the Western Cordillera...I'm surprised it's not commoner in gardens.

It's not common in many gardens because most of us who don't garden in the dryland west prefer to grow plants that are reliably perennial. I've never kept it more than one winter, and as beautiful as it is, my garden space is better utilized by other beautiful plants that live a bit longer. I've had it sited right next to Eriogonum caespitosa, which has been in the garden for 5 years, and the Phacelia croaked sometime over the winter while the Eriogonum was in full bloom the next spring. As you point out, it must be REALLY xeric.

I've admired this plant (in photos, not in person) for some time, Jane's and Panayotis' notes are very enlightening.. I'll definitely be trying seed of this one sometime!.. I don't mind shortlived if it provides seed as Jane's do ..
While the purple is showier, Jane, I do think the white makes a great contrast-- and I am always drawn to plants with the 'wrong' colour for their genus :)

Hmm, interesting observations.  It's certainly been short-lived in captivity for me here - can't say about in the wild (although the big plant on the way up to Elbow Lake would be memorable enough to keep tabs on...)  It doesn't seem so strongly xeric up in this area... Todd's photo shows it on a river floodplain, and I see it most often at higher elevations on scree slopes that have water running underneath, even keeping company with Epilobium latifolium.

Backing up Lori...whenever I've seen Phacelia sericea in Alberta, it has always has wet-feet at least...river beds, seepage areas, etc.  I never thought of it as xeric per se.

I remember river beds in the Altai carpeted with Orostachys spinosa, which also grew on rocky hillsides in the steppe: river beds may be periodically inundated, but the surface of a river bed can get mighty dry (hence the carpet of xerophytic Orostachys rather than grasses, say, or mesophytes)...their roots would never penetrate down to the wet levels.

Phacelia sericea has obviously adapted to regions of much higher rainfall: it's not a xerophyte in that sense. But I'll bet you that anywhere you see it the surface three or four inches would be extremely well drained and often dry.

In Colorado it's almost a joke how abundantly it grows on road verges at higher elevations (like penstemons): we often speculate on how rare it must have been prior to humans creating vast habitats for it. I often see it growing in rock crevices, however, and rocky screes--usually in full sun where they are well drained. I have never seen it in nivale settings or alongside the likes of Rhodiola rhodantha, which likes wet feet. Rhodiola rosea var. integrifolia can grow very dry.

I still maintain it is (at heart) a xerophyte.

Here it is growing on Mt. Washburn in Yellowstone Park at around 8,000 ft:

They were big plants, like garden lupines.  I believe this form is v. ciliosa, but I'm not sure.  Note the Mertensia on the right.  These were growing on a steep hillside.