Server Crash

Aside from being preoccupied with Spring, I've been mostly off-line for the last 10 days or so due to the crash of the hard drive on my local net server. This was just brought back on-line yesterday, so I guess I'm back again for a bit.

May Flowers

The Trillium are all long finished. A few seed berries are ripening on the Trillium, but otherwise there are just green stems and leaves. The Iris reticulata are also well past; but Iris missouriensis was in bloom recently. And now the Northern Blue Flag, Iris versicolor, is in bloom. Arisaema stewardsonii is blooming in the wet bed, and Arisaema sazensoo is in flower on newly planted tubers in the woodland garden.

Crinum minima, a dwarf species from South Africa, bloomed briefly today. It grows and flowers in a 1-gallon pot (about 7 inches wide by 7 inches deep). Crinum bulbispermum has been blooming in a very protected spot against the greenhouse.

In the lath house, I'm trying to coax the Amorphophallus into growth. A. titanum tubers are sprouting their second set of leaves already. A. konjac has shoots starting to push up, and A, bulbifer have their leaf shoots well started. Amorphophallus paeonifolium is the reluctant one of the bunch. None of these amorphophallus plants are large enough to bloom so far, which is a good thing. Probably ten years ago, I saw a small amorphophallus from Thailand blooming in a 1- or 2-gallon pot in a greenhouse at the University of Basel (Switzerland) Botanical Garden. It was smaller than the others can get, and quite attractive. I think it might have been A. bulbifer, but that was a long time ago, so who knows?

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim