What Does Perennial Really Mean?

Annual plants live for a year...

Convolvulus 'Ensign Blue'

 
Biennials live for two years...

Black Hollyhock
Alcea rosea var. nigra

 
Perennials live forever...

Heuchera x brizoides 'Firefly'

Right?

Rudbeckia triloba

Oh, if only it were so.

Several times, after I've lost a plant or two in the garden, Romie will say to me, "Why did it die? What did you do wrong?" or "You shouldn't plant that one anymore." He thinks, like many people do, that perennials are immortal beings and if they succumb after several years of growing in our garden that surely I must have done something to it or I didn't do something I should have.

Not necessarily.

Did you know that "perennial" had
a symbol? Neither did I. This is it.

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a perennial is "a plant that lives for more than two years." And in my garden, that's all the longer that some of them have lived. I don't know if that's the natural life span of those plants that didn't return after their second winter, or whether something else was the cause of their demise.

But it's nice to know that I've got yet another excuse to add to the list of why my plants die:

• I watered them too much.
• I didn't water them enough.
• The bugs got 'em.
• They had too much sun.
• They had too much shade.
• The rabbits had them for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner.
• The soil was too acidic.
• The soil was too alkaline.
• The chickens dug them up.
• The winter was extraordinarily cold.
• The neighbor's pig, Barney, sat on them.
• They died of natural causes after a full and fabulous life of two years.

It's a miracle any plant lives at all, isn't it?

"Who? Me?"