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Brown flowers subdue and chasten the flames of the garden; they tame the cerise and magenta; they mollify the madder and vermillion. Although their beauty is retiring and gentle, their fragrance is unrivalled by any of the brighter-toned flowers.

It took a brown daylily to teach me the value of brown in the garden. Hemerocallis fulva Granada, is a rich chestnut backed with gold. The inner petals are curled. It is taller than Hemerocallis fulva, the yellow daylily. Separately, these daylilies lack flavor; planted together the color composition is complete. Both are sweet-scented.

There are as many browns in the garden as there are in the telephone book. For a start we have fawn, fox, sorrel, roan and maroon; cinnamon, chestnut, hazel and snuff; hernia, bronze, copper, rust and dust. There are brown combinations – rosewood – brown over rose; puce – brown over purple; puce – brown blended with white. Some brown flowers are fiercely mysterious with tigerings of purple and gold; others are penciled and splashed so that they acquire a third dimension – a depth unending. A final gift from nature to this favored pigment is a texture of velvet.

A walk in the woods will disclose some brown whitings. The Asarum or wild ginger hears a chocolate flower in a three-way pattern of which the petals end in long points to rival the shoes and peaked cap of the little old Brownie himself. The asarum grows close upon the ground in dense woods and is apt to be overlooked. When you do see it you may doubt your eyes. Even the leaves are mottled, puckish, altogether eerie.

Three Brown Trilliums

Another low grower is the brown peony, Peony browni, with five and six-petaled flowers in dull brown over red. It blooms during the Spring and Summer in Californian woods. There are three brown trilliums: Trillium lanceolatum is said to occur from Georgia to Alaska and is brown over purple; another is Trillium recurvatum, native from Mississippi to Arkansas, and a third, Trillium erectum, from North Carolina to Missouri.

We come now to an exciting brown wild flower, Calycanthus. Calycanthus florida has dark green foliage and reddish-brown flowers. These flowers are surprising to come upon. They resemble ragged chrysanthemums, and to see chrysanthemums adorning a 14-foot bush way out in the woods, will amaze anyone. The flowers have enough petals to be considered at least semi-double, yet nature usually produces single flowers. The dark flowers of Calycanthus Florida are fragrant in a spicy, bracing fashion.

Calyeanthus occidenlalis flowers are rosewood within, yellow ochre without. The leaf, trunk and twig are all pungently sweet, but the flower is without scent. Both these shrubs are procurable in nurseries that specialize in whitings, and both look well in group plantings. Calycanthus is hardy; Calycanthus Florida is the hardier of the two.

In the cultivated garden, brown flowers are everywhere. There are brown chrysanthemums, colored equally of earth, air and sun. There are tan tulips resembling drained sunlight; there are brown-amber iris; dust-pale dahlias and sepia stocks. The tall calliopsis and the lowly marigold can be had in mahogany and maroon. Everybody knows the elfin brown pansies and the rust and rosewood nasturtiums; what everybody does not know are the calceolarias in roan undershot with yellow and the salpiglossis in all shades of brown tigered boldly with purple, orange and red.

Boronia Megastigma

Even less well-known is a flower that is always brown, Boronia megastigma. Its countless thimble flowers are claret brown lined with dark yellow. Its fragrance is considered by many to be the sweetest in the world. It is a blend containing orange blossoms, to which the plant is related, both being rues. And it partakes of violet and vanilla with a tang of spice. All this sweetness is poured forth both night and day in a stream that will permeate half a city.

Boronia can be grown outdoors in San Francisco where the equable climate resembles that of Australia from which the plant sterns. In a colder climate it must be grown in a greenhouse during the Winter and set into the flower bed when frost is past. It comes easily from seed which can be obtained from Australian seedhouses, and it roots readily from half-ripened tip cuttings which will bloom as soon as struck, so virile is this little bush. We always grow new plants every two years as two-year-old branches stiffer die-back.

As a matter of confession, Boronia is short-lived, though not at all delicate. At one time, potted Boronias were sold at Easter, and they kept the house richly-scented weeks after the pale Easter lily had meekly folded. Boronias require light, rich soil, perfect drainage and full sun.

There is another Boronia, Boronia elatior, a much taller shrub bearing rosy-purple thimbles which are Unscented.

A rather shy “brownie” is Matthiola bieornis, the evening-scented stock, described as purplish-brown, a color better known as puce. It is a straggling thing when the sun is out, but with nightfall it stands straight up and emits such a perfume the whole garden is laden. It comes easily from seed but the plants do not always reach flowering stage. During dampish Summers it is apt to go off with the “wilts” like cabbage, to which it is related.

A brown about whose color there can be no doubt is the wallflower, although here again it is a blend of burgundy, bronze and rust. The centers are gold. For us the wallflower proved “picky”. First they got too much moisture and went off with the “spots”. Then we took note of the name and set small plants at the top of the double rock wall, laying the tap roots in scree among porous sandstone. There they bloom year after year, smelling sweetly by day, even sweeter by night when the gardener’s prowling flashlight sends the field mice tumbling backward into their burrows. Pausing, the gardener hears nothing but the whisper of petal on petal in the night wind.

by D Hammar