Squib Knocket For Everyone!!!

i like weird plants. Or rare. Or anything obscure with a strange name. i have variegated horseradish, hemp leaved mallow, laceleaf lilac, "Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate" (Polygonum orientale) - stuff like that. I am still looking for Hosta "Illicit Affair" - sounds like a T-shirt slogan ("...I wanted an illicit affair in the garden, and all I got was this stupid plant!")

Anyway. A few years back i heard of a plant in the Euphorbia family (Euphorbia cyparissias), one of the common names of it being "Squib - Knocket", and i thought that was pretty interesting. (Note: Other colloquial names of the plant are Welcome-To-Our-Home, Graveyard-Moss, and Quack-Salver's-Spurge; in Dutch, a quack-salver is a charlatan - ( i haven't a clue what the hell a quack salver is, but, then again, what's a "Squib"?).

So i started to try to find the elusive Squib- Knocket - i finally did, but can't remember if it was thru a swap or if i actually paid money for it (i have seen it at nurseries occasionally). Sort of pretty, except it got less pretty the more INVASIVE it got! Plus the sap is sticky and causes a rash if i get it on my skin. Got it on the rock garden, and hasn't seemed to travel beyond trying to take that over, and i do still have it just because i like to see the look on someone's face when i tell them what it is! The disadvantages don't outweigh the novelty yet, so i'll continue to fight with it until they do!

Beware Of Innocent - Looking Plant Tags

i acquired this 'Hakuro Nishiki' willow (Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki') several years ago. It was a real find at the time - beautiful pink, green and white leaves, supposed to get about 4-5 feet tall, according to the info on the plant tag, so i found an appropriate spot to plant it (for a medium/small shrub).

Well, i think you can see by the photo that it did NOT stay quite that small! That is a 6 foot fence behind it! i'm tired of DH always asking me "Why did you plant such a large plant in such a small space?" "Well, DEAR, because it was not SUPPOSED to get that big!" That happens to me a lot - it's not that i don't read the tags or that i give my plants a lot of fertilizer - they just get big!

i do have it trained as a standard; however, it sprouts constantly from the trunk. This was taken 2 months ago, and is even larger now! At the Farmers Market this Spring, a nursery was selling tons of these cultivars, trained as petite, well behaved looking ( about a foot in diameter - HA!) standards, and i took it as my own personal responsibility to follow each person who purchased one and WARN them of the monster it may become! So if you run across one of these, i would not tell you to pass it up - it IS beautiful, after all - just make sure you can give it enough room (and don't believe the tag)!