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Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 12:30 PM EDT - Factors Regulating the Growth and the Flowering Cycles in Haemanthus

These conclusions were derived from discussion of triggers of new flowering and growth cycles in winter-growing Haemanthus of the Western Cape. The discussion was carried out in the Pacific Bulb Society discussion list on ibiblio.org in August, 2010.

Flowering

• Length of time since end of last growth cycle or perhaps since initiation of the previous flowering cycle
• Temperatures
• Water availability and day length

Growth

• Water and temperature
• Length of time since last cycle
• Day length

In each case it appears that factor 1 is the most important, that factor(s) 2 may play some role, and that factor(s) 3 are probably irrelevant.

I take the first visibility of the new umbel in the neck of the bulb as the beginning of the flowering cycle. I am sure that the initiation of development of that new scape occurs much earlier.

Elongation of the peduncle appears to respond to lower temperatures, availability of water, and perhaps the presence of nutrients.

The temperature changes, ΔT, rather than the absolute temperatures, seem to be the factors that affect the plant cycles.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

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Sunday, August 29, 2010, 12:30 PM EDT - The Story of The Butterfly Amaryllis

We thank Mariano Saviello of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for his pictures and historical notes on Hippeastrum papilio, the "Butterfly Amaryllis."

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Hippeastrum papilio

Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum papilio (Ravenna) Van Scheepen is an endangered epiphytic species that, paradoxically, is increasingly propagated among gardeners while its natural range is degraded and diminished. Papilio is native to tropical forests of the Atlantic Coast of southern Brazil and was first scientifically collected only in the late 1960s. In the next decades, plant breeders in Holland and the United States began to develop unique hybrids that express Papilio's resistance to Hippeastrum Mosaic Virus (HMV).

In 1967, H. papilio was discovered in a garden in Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil , by Dr. Carlos A. Gómez Rupple, an Argentine collector. The species was published as Amaryllis papilio by Argentine botanist Pedro Félix Ravenna (Pierfelice Ravenna) in 1970. In 1997, Van Scheepen separated New World amaryllids (Amaryllidaceae) from African true Amaryllis and assigned the genus name Hippeastrum to the American species. Papilio was considered extinct in its natural habitat until the 1990s, when an Escondido, California plant breeder, Fred Meyer, observed it growing in tall trees in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Hippeastrum papilio survives now as a population of 50 plants within a 4-square-mile patch of Atlantic Forest habitat, fragmented by roads and drains. These survivors are representatives of larger species and genus distribution. The forest's original 476,000 square miles was reduced to only 38,600 square miles, first by sugarcane and coffee plantations and later by urbanization. The original forest was about the size of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida combined. The remaining forest is smaller than Mississippi .

Hippeastrum papilio

Hippeastrum papilio

In Brazil, H. papilio blooms in October, the southern hemisphere spring, but in cultivation in the United States and Europe, Papilio may bloom at any time in late winter to early spring. The flowers will readily set seeds, but will not self-pollinate. The plant also multiplies by producing off-shoots of bulbs. Papilio is among the most vigorous of the Hippeastrum, with rapidly growing seedlings, making it an excellent parent for hybrids. However, some cross-pollination with existing hybrids sets seeds that grow vigorously at first, but abort after 28 days due to chromosome incompatibility.

Among the 80+ known Hippeastrum, many cultivated species can each be traced to only a few plants that were collected and propagated. Thus, commercial Hippeastrum producers risk loss to diseases, because only about 10% of Hippeastrum genomic diversity is present in existing cultivars. Papilio is an evergreen that does not display any symptoms of infection by Hippeastrum Mosaic Virus (HMV). Thus far, its hybrid offspring express a wide range of levels of resistance to mosaic virus.

Some bulbs of H. papilio are self fertile, and some are self sterile. Len Doran says that it was of hybrid origin and does breed true within the parameters of a species description. Some forms are green flowered with the dark red markings and others are white with red or very dark marking. In any case, it is a wonderful very easy plant to grow in pots or in the garden. It can even take some frost on the leaves in a bad winter.

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Thank you, Mariano.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, August 27, 2010, 8:30 AM EDT - Haemanthus Blooming

Unique Haemanthus coccineus

This one has bloomed a couple of weeks ahead of all the other coccineus the last couple of years. This year, the heat when it tried to bloom seems to have affected the coloration of the bracts. I find this oddball bloom very attractive; I just wish it would do it every year!

Haemanthus coccineus with Bicolor Bracts

I think this bicolor pattern is a thermal effect. It was very hot when this scape started trying to emerge. It was stuck half-way out of the bulb for a couple of weeks at least, and I think this was, while the hidden parts of the bracts developed the normal scarlet coloration.

Haemanthus pubescens pubescens

These bulbs came out of Rod and Rachel Saunders' yard near Cape Town. This is the first time they have bloomed. Since this is a first bloom, I expect the inflorescence to become a bit bigger in future years. The bulbs were decent sized when I received them, but they suffered several years trying to adjust to the change of hemispheres, so it has taken over 5 years for them to flower here.

Haemanthus pubescens pubescens, First Bloom

The blooms typically have 4 or 5 stout, fleshy bracts, sometimes as many as 7. The flowers are overshadowed by the longer bracts. Snijman (1984) recognized three subspecies: pubescens, leipoldtii, and arenicolus. The latter two are quite rare.

Haemanthus barkerae

Haemanthus barkerae is a member of a group of closely related species including crispus and tristis which have similar bulb structures and inflorescences. Snijman also groups namaquensis with these three species, but I have my doubts about this one. A good dose of DNA sequencing appears to be called for to sort these out. In any case, all four of these species are found only in Namaqualand and the western Karoo. Crispus has a small bright scarlet inflorescence on a very short stem; namaquensis has a large scarlet bloom that looks much like coccineus; tristus and barkerae both have light pink bracts and flowers. I still lack tristis, unfortunately; it's quite rare and possibly endangered.

Haemanthus barkerae

H. barkerae has a limited range, but still varies in leaf shape from north to south in that restricted area. I'm surprised someone hasn't split the different populations into two or three separate species. Perhaps no one dares challenge the formidable Dr. Snijman!

Haemanthus [barkerae x coccineus]

This is a cross I made myself. The resulting inflorescence is pretty close to an average between the two parental species insofar as the size and shape are concerned. The leaves tend to be examples of hybrid vigor in some cases, with the form of the barkerae leaves but much larger. They also started blooming in only 4 or 5 years instead of the 7 to 10 years their parental species take from seed to flowering -- more hybrid vigor.

Haemanthus [barkerae x coccineus]

In making this cross, I had hoped to get some of the pink color of the barkerae with the larger form of the coccineus inflorescence. So far, those hybrids that have bloomed all have form like over-sized barkerae and the scarlet color of coccineus. I judge the color pink to be recessive in the crispus group of species.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Monday, August 23, 2010, 3:30 PM EDT - Plants Can't Keep Pace

It looks like the Earth is getting warmer. We all know that plants are sensitive to temperature, and here is a note on how they are reacting.

Carbon Sink Falters

There is an item in the American Scientist E-Newsletter for today summarizing an article in Nature News from a few days ago. It seems that green plants are not absorbing the CO₂ from the atmosphere as effectively as they were just a few years ago.

The results of a new study were compared to results of a similar study done ten years ago. The researchers found that the period from 1982-1999 showed an increase in global plant productivity whereas the period 2000-2009, covered by the new study, did not show an equivalent increase in plant productivity.

Among the factors to which the decrease in productivity is attributed include more droughts in the Southern Hemisphere, where the decrease was observed. The Northern Hemisphere showed an increase in productivity, but not enough to offset the decrease in the Southern Hemisphere. The limiting factor for plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere tends to be temperature, while the limiting factor in the Southern Hemisphere is availability of water.

You will have to look for the original article in the current issue of the journal "Science" to get the details of how they determined this. I haven't seen it myself yet, but it appears they used satellite observations to measure the plant density over the entire land area of Earth. I think that decreases in metabolic efficiency of C₃ plants will eventually reverse the increased productivity still being seen in the Northern Hemisphere. See blog for August 22 for discussion of C₃ plants.

You need to be a subscriber to "American Scientist" magazine to sign up for the e-newsletter. You may need to be a subscriber to the journal "Nature" to access the Nature News website. You might also want to check out the Discover magazine daily e-mail blog, 80 Beats.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Sunday, August 22, 2010, 12:30 PM EDT - Plants in a Warmer World

It looks like the Earth is getting warmer. We all know that plants are sensitive to temperature, so let's look at a few of the details of how plants respond to changing temperatures and why.

C₃ Plants

The notation "C₃" refers to the biochemical intermediates involved in CO₂ fixation in green plants. They use an intermediate that produces three carbon atom long products when they bind CO₂ chemically. Far and away, most of the plants in this world are using C₃ metabolism. It is the oldest metabolic route to carbon fixation. It works better in cooler climates. When the plants are grown in warmer climates, they become much less efficient; and when it is too warm for them, they tend to burn off the carbon as fast as they fix it.

C₄ and CAM Plants

These plants use C₄ intermediates, compounds that are four carbon atoms long, in binding CO₂. They tend to be more efficient than C₃ plants, and they handle warmer temperatures better. They burn off much less of the fixed carbon that they produce. There are two general types of plants here, the Crassulaceae and some of the grasses. Those grasses are very important to humanity: they include corn ("maize" if you're outside the U.S.A.) and sugar cane.

For a broader discussion of C₃ and C₄ plants, see the Wikipedia.

Biochemical Reactions at Higher Temperatures

Chemical reactions generally go faster at higher temperatures than they do at lower temperatures. Chemists change the temperatures at which they run reactions, e.g., to get the process to finish faster (higher temperatures) or to suppress competing reactions (maybe at lower temperatures). The same things apply to the biochemical reactions that comprise physiological processes.

In biochemistry, one of the competing reactions that becomes dominant at higher temperatures is always the inactivation of the enzymes that catalyze the biochemical steps. You have a rising curve for the reaction speed and a descending curve superimposed on it for the inactivation. So every biochemical process has an optimum temperature at which it runs best.

What Might Happen

There are more C₄ plants in the tropics and subtropical regions than in the cooler zones. As the Earth warms up, we may see the C₄ plants increase their share of the biomass at higher latitudes. Plants that need cooler temperatures to thrive will have to migrate poleward or be displaced by plants that like the warmer temperatures. It stands to reason that many plant species now growing at the north and south extremes of the biozone are going to disappear completely. As the mountain warms, you can move up the mountain to a cooler region, until you reach the top. Then, if the warming continues, your goose is going to be cooked.

Why some organisms can live at higher or at lower temperatures is at heart a matter of competing reactions at different temperatures. Tolerated temperatures and optimum temperatures can be adjusted by evolution, but it generally takes a long time to accomplish. Things are changing pretty fast right now. A lot of plants and animals we see around us now may not be here in a century or two.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, August 20, 2010, 11:36 AM EDT - Potpourri

Plant and Bulb Sources

I maintain (occasionally) a list of sources of plants, bulbs, and seeds. This page is at: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/GLOVBulbs/SOURCES.html. I add new vendors as I hear of them, and I occasionally remove a listing when I get more than one complaint about the service they render.

If one or more of your favorite bulb, plant, or seed vendors is not included in this list, please contact me (links on the SOURCES web page) with the information to add them.

Weather and Climate

Have people stopped claiming that climate change either does not exist or is not caused by human activities? Or have I just stopped reading the rants of the crazy fringe? I have come to consider the ravings of the anti-climate change folks chiefly to be indicators of the profound weakness of the science education in our schools. Have we produced several consecutive generations of scientific ignoramuses? How unfit can you make people to live in a technological society where their very survival depends on science and technology, from energy production to agriculture to modern medicine? People who do not understand science and technology -- and by "understand" I don't mean just being able to use an iPad -- will make stupid and dangerous decisions at the ballot boxes.

The scientific community is finally making more forceful statements about the changes taking place in Earth's climate. My own rants are in the blog archives; see December 25, 2006 and February 16, 2007. There is no reasonable doubt that the global climate is changing, and it seems highly likely that the direction of change is due to human activity. Without human activity, we would probably be heading back into another Ice Age.

Walking

My only forms of exercise are a little gardening (working at the potting bench does not count as exercise) and walking. -- I'm fond of walking along the Monon Trail here in Westfield, Indiana, and in next-door Carmel. I may have mentioned it in the past: It is the former roadbed of the Monon Railroad. The Trail runs in an almost straight line from near downtown Indianapolis up to a bit north of 156th street in Westfield. The Hamilton county portion, Carmel and Westfield, is about 6.5 miles long so far, with Westfield planning to eventually extend it farther north. In Carmel, it's called the Monon Greenway.

Most of the users of the Monon Trail are friendly people. Many of them smile and and say, "Good morning!" or at least nod. There are a few music zombies with earbuds and glassy stares. They are the losers, of course, missing out on a light touch of human good will as they plow blindly ahead. At least their bodies are getting plenty of exercise even if their souls are temporarily in stasis.

I do have one gripe about some of my fellow trail-users: Those, mainly on bicycles, who overtake and pass without any warning. Trail etiquette used to be that bicyclists and skaters called out "On your left" before passing. That seems to be a lost form of courtesy in the last couple of years. I've even had a couple of riders brush my elbow in passing. Shame on them! Regular users of the Monon Trail are a kind of community, and our fellow users deserve our courtesy.

The Monon Trail is a microcosm of Nature, a narrow strip of almost natural trees, shrubs, and even a few flowers. Then there are the small creatures, from butterflies and birds to chipmunks and squirrels. It's a refreshing place to just be, even if you are not into exercise.

Crinum Blooming

There is still a bloom on one clump of the hardy Crinum variabile, and another scape is coming up. Planting this species with Crinum bulbispermum would extend the crinum flowering season in the garden from early June to early September.

Crinum variabile

Note that the new flowers open completely white, then develop a strong pink blush as they age. It makes for a very nice bicolor effect in the garden, and on a "macro" scale easily visible from a distance.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, August 19, 2010, 9:30 AM EDT - Flowers and Herbicides

Lontrel®

We use Lontrel® on our daylilies. It is very good at suppressing Canada Thistle. With the following caveats, I personally recommend it for use controlling weeds in perennials.

Lontrel® damages hostas if sprayed directly on the leaves. We were reminded of that last spring when we oversprayed beds with hostas in them; we sprayed the hostas right along with everything else. The leaves became highly distorted, and I suspect the plants may still show damage next year, if they survive.

Now I see the spray has also affected the Lycoris. Some plants growing in beds that were oversprayed have put up scapes that were twisted and distorted. I don't know if we used too strong a solution or if Lycoris are just among the susceptible perennial species that should not be sprayed directly with this herbicide.

Lycoris chinensis apparently damaged by herbicide

Most Lycoris did not show any damage, so it may be that those like the above just got way too much of the spray. I'm not sure, but we will definitely need to watch out for this next year.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, August 14, 2010, 10:30 AM EDT - Late Summer Flowers. IV.

Garden Plants: Crinum

There is no new bloom to report this late in the season, but there is some nice rebloom that deserves to be mentioned. Crinum variabile plants outdoors in the ground are on their third and even fourth scapes for this summer. This species blooms with the fresh flowers almost pure white. Then, as the flower ages, it develops red coloration as the flowers droop. The result is a bicolored umbel with erect fresh new white flowers above older drooping red tinged flowers. This scape, below, is just opening its first flowers, so there is no red color showing yet.

Crinum variabile

It looks as if some sort of bug has been attacking the flowers and buds of the C. variabile. I didn't find the actual culprit itself.

Crinum [variabile x bulbispermum] are also reblooming. Thanks to the bulbispermum parent, these hybrids all have red-bronze coloration on the outside of the tepals on the newly opened flowers. They seem to be as hardy as the variabile parents are. They start blooming much earlier in the season than the variabile start to bloom and then rebloom once or twice. These pictures were taken on June 24th this summer, and they show two different plants. On rebloom, the scapes tend to carry 12 to 14 flower buds. These plants are fertile, and I sib crossed some of them to produce seeds. I don't know that the F₂ will be any more interesting than these F1 plants, but perhaps a little less uniform in appearance.

Crinum [variabile x bulbispermum]

I seem to have missed the very first blooms on my Crinum carlo-schmidtii seedlings, which are growing in pots. I blame this oversight on the miserably hot and humid weather we have been having the last several weeks. I'll have to keep a better watch next season.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, August 13, 2010, 10:30 AM EDT - Late Summer Flowers. III.

Garden Plants: Lycoris

The old familiar "Naked Lady" of the Midwest is Lycoris squamigera. I never get around to photographing squamigera for some reason. We take it for granted, but it isn't really all that common anymore outside the small country towns. It is a sterile triploid, now known to be a natural hybrid between L. longituba and L. sprengeri. Of the species listed here, it is one of the earlier to bloom every summer except for the dwarf orange species, sanguinea.

Just as hardy as squamigera is Lycoris chinensis, the tall, spidery yellow species. All these plants that I grow, except for squamigera, came from the Shanghai Botanic Garden in China. They exhibit a considerable degere of variability in flower form and color. I suspect this is due to natural or accidental hybridization in the botanic garden. The chinensis vary from lemon yellow to rich buttery golden yellow in color. The form varies from narrow, ruffled, spidery petals to broader, smooth petals similar to those of longituba. It makes a strong statement in the late summer garden.

Lycoris chinensis

The large white trumpets of longituba are very elegant in the garden. They naturally vary from pure white to a very pale pink tint to a very pale yellow tint. The petals are generally smooth and flat.

Lycoris longituba

Lycoris sprengeri is smaller than chinensis and longituba. The flowers, however, have a remarkable coloration: The pink petals have an electric blue sheen at their tips!

Lycoris sprengeri

These Lycoris listed above all share a trait that lends their hardiness to them in cold climates like mine: Their leaves appear only in the spring. Otherwise hardy species like L. radiata radiata eventually waste away when grown here in the North, because their foliage always appears in the autumn. Our bitter winters then proceed to destroy it in the course of the winter. After a few years of this, the bulbs are so weakened that they disappear. Most of the Lycoris listings that we see in the mass market bulb catalogs, except for squamigera, are for similar species that leaf out in the fall and carry their leaves through the entire winter. Some of them may also have bulbs that cannot tolerate frozen ground as well. While the catalog Lycoris can do very well in the warm South, our hardy species do not grow well down there. They need the cold winter weather to signal their life cycles to proceed to dormancy and then on to leafing out in spring. Without exposure to cold temperatures, they stay stuck in their late summer post-bloom phase until they dwindle away.

Lycoris squamigera increases rapidly without human intervention, producing lots of offsets. I think the largest bulbs may also tend to split in two occasionally. Lycoris chinensis and L. longituba produce offsets much more slowly. My attempts to increase these two species by twin-scaling were pretty much unsuccessful, while twin-scaling of squamigera worked quite well. Only L. sprengeri increases at a pace close to that of squamigera. We are not able to offer any of them for sale, but you might try Bulbmeister and Telos Rare Bulbs.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, August 12, 2010, 12:15 PM EDT - Late Summer Flowers. II.

Potted Plants: Hymenocallis and Nerine

Hymenocallis azteciana is a dwarf Mexican species. It is quite rare in cultivation, and I have just the one plant. It appears to be self-sterile, so I can't produce seeds. Hopefully, I will at least eventually get a few offsets. Thad Howard described it in his book, "Bulbs for Warm Climates," thusly: from Jalasca in western Mexico; a medium size species with a small cup, slightly S-shaped floral tubes. Thad said it blooms in mid-summer; mine seems to bloom in late summer.

Hymenocallis azteciana

Other mid- to small sized Mexican species that we have in the collection include acutifolia, durangoensis, eucharidifolia, glauca, graminicola, guerreroensis, harrisiana (ex hort), howardii, and phalangides. Over the years, I have lost lehmilleri, chiapasiana, and nayaritiana. We have a plant of imperialis, but this does not count as a small or mid-sized species! We have something that might be riparia or perhaps sonorensis, which bloomed at least a month ago. I don't trust the riparia/sonorensis bulbs I've received over the years, since they all seem to be the same thing to me. I should have taken a picture of them when they bloomed. One thing to remember about Mexican Hymenocallis, and other things like rain lilies: to identifiy the species, you may have to know exactly where in the wild the bulb was collected. Either that, or do a lot of DNA sequencing, which I'm not equipped for.

We have some Hymenocallis occidentalis outdoors in the ground, where it is pretty hardy, and H. liriosme which survives in the ground near one of the greenhouses. We lined some more liriosme seedlings out in a bed in the open this summer, to see how hardy they might be. Maybe I can report back on this next year.

Now here is an interesting little item: When is "Nerine forbesii" really Nerine laticoma? I'm not sure, myself. Graham Duncan doesn't consider the name Nerine forbesii to be valid, and he doesn't include Swaziland in the range of N. laticoma. Yet the first picture below is what I received as Nerine forbesii with a provenance of Swaziland.

Nerine forbesii

Nerine laticoma from a different source looks like the following. Incidentally, this is the first time the laticoma below has ever bloomed for me. I'm trying to pollinate the forbesii with pollen from this laticoma. I have tried in past years to pollinate flowers of forbesii with fresh pollen from N. krigei and with stored pollen of N. bowdenii, both to no avail.

Nerine laticoma

They could well be two different forms of the same species. Their foliage seems to be the same, glossy green, about ¾ inch wide, and very similar in shape and length. So far, neither seems to be making offsets.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 7:00 PM EDT - Late Summer Flowers. I.

Potted Plants: Haemanthus and Scadoxus

In the Haemanthus, the end of summer is marked by the first plooms on the red flowered Western Cape species. This year, the first to bloom is a bulb of Haemanthus namaquensis that has never flowered before. It just flowered a few days ago and is already starting to go over. The hot, humid nights are probably somewhat to blame for the short bloom period. A different bulb of namaquensis bloomed for the first time last year but is not blooming this summer. The bright scarlet red inflorescence is only about 4 inches high and 2 inches wide.

Haemanthus namaquensis

Haemanthus barkerae is often the very first of the red-flowered Western Cape species to bloom for me. It is a variable species, but the flowers are mainly a pale pink. The leaves, when they get here, vary by colony of origin from linear to sword-shaped. The inflorescence is up to 7 inches tall but only about 1½ inches wide.

Haemanthus barkerae

Haemanthus albiflos, as common in cultivation as namaquensis is rare, is also starting to bloom. This species is evergreen, with the old leaves dying as the new leaves finishing development.

Haemanthus albiflos

Scadoxus membranaceus is blooming later, and most of the flowers were in July. These probably would do better if they were not forced to go dormant in winter. I repotted these in January and February, then started watering and feeding them immediately. Several bloomed this summer; this is the last flower remaining.

Scadoxus membranaceus

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

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Monday, July 19, 2010, 12:15 PM EDT - Busy Summer

Doldrums

The summer is a busy time around here, but it also seems to be a time when I find little to write about. Isn't once enough to hear about pulling weeds? Even the camera seldom gets used. My intention to photograph more of the daylilies in our garden never became actual. Maybe next year....

The weather has been oppressive. Lots of 90-degree days, with high humidity and afternoon thunderstorms every couple of days. For Non-U.S. readers, 90°F is 32 C; central Indiana averages 18 or 19 days each summer when the temperatures reach or exceed 90°F. We've had about half that quota so far, but it seems like more, because the non-90° days have hit 86 to 88°F. I must be getting old, because I don't like to be out in those temperatures with high humidities.

Closing Out the Daylilies

We wanted to close out the sales beds of daylilies this year, so we had a $5 sale. It did bring a lot of people in, especially new customers. Unfortunately, the bloom season is over for almost all the daylilies in our garden now, and we still have half of the plants left. So, next summer, we will have the final daylily close-out sale! What's left this time next year will go on the compost heap.

Fifteen years ago, there was a fad in daylilies, and we sold lots of them. Now, every neighborhood on the north side of Indianapolis has at least one house with a yard full of daylilies from our garden. No one needs to really buy them anymore -- just admire those at your neighbor's house when the neighbor is out in the garden. You'll very probably be given more plants than you can use!

Daylilies are high maintenance when grown in a nursery. Weeding is a constant chore, and needs to be started before high school and colleges are out for the summer. My garden crew are all high school and college students. If there are no students here, then not much weeding gets done. I look forward to their arrival in the garden every spring, and I'll miss them all when they start back to school again in a couple of weeks -- Richard, Nat, Steph, Anna, and Justin. I hope they'll be back again next year.

What Is Blooming?

The pink spherical umbels on Haemanthus humilis humilis are almost bloomed out. These provide a reliable spot of pink color on our deck in July, now that the bulbs have reached blooming size.

Haemanthus humilis humilis

The hardy Gladiolus x-gandavensis, a primrose-yellow hybrid of South African species that survives here in USDA zone 5, is in bloom. These came about ten years ago from The Great Plant Company (New Hartford, CT), which I have not heard from since. I originally had six corms, but three died. The remaining three corms have increased nicely. These glads will survive in a flower pot in the greenhouse as well as outdoors in the ground. I'm going to divide these this fall, after frost.

Gladiolus x-gandavensis

Crocosmia 'Lucifer' with its panicles of small, fiery red flowers, is also hardy here and is just starting to bloom now. These came from Brent & Becky's Bulbs over ten years ago. A different clone, with larger flowers but much less hardy, came from a local garden shop about the same time. The larger-flowered clone died after only a couple winters. All 'Lucifer' are not alike.

Crocosmia 'Lucifer'

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 6:45 PM EDT - June Weeds and Other Flowers

Weeds

Weeds actually dominate May and June in the garden. My helpers have been attacking the weeds since early May, and we still have plenty to go. The bane of my existence is Canada Thistle, but Bindweed, Mustard, and miscellaneous grasses contribute their shares as well. We try to spray for weeds, of course, but while that can help, we have to watch out for damage to our flowers. Having been a chemist most of my life, I am not opposed to spraying weed killers. I just want to use them in a reasonable way. I can say from personal observation that most people who spray to kill bugs or weeds do not use the proper precautions to keep the sprays off their skin and out of their lungs. Read the directions, take all the precautions, wear protective clothing and gloves, and wash the clothes and yourself thoroughyly after spraying.

We found out the hard way that Hosta are susceptible to Lontrel® weed killer. Take my advice, and keep Lontrel® off your hostas. It is my weed killer of choice for daylilies and most bulbs, but not for hosta. We usually spray it mixed with Fusilage II® to also control grasses, at least early in the season. By this time of the year, the grasses have mostly become immune to Fusilade.

Daylilies

The daylilies (Hemerocallis) are the next flowers to show up. Many of the extra early ("EE") varieties are already in bloom. These earliest daylilies are predominantly yellow or orange in color.

Hemerocallis 'Stella De Oro'

Hemerocallis 'Parade Queen'

Hardy Crinums

A few years ago, Al Sisk sent me some bulbs he had acquired from homeowners around his part of Texas. We were going to test them for cold hardiness here in central Indiana. They were planted out in an open bed, where they got some mulching the first winter but not in later winters. Three bulbs survived and have prospered: Mrs. Jordan's Red, Mrs. Jordan's White, and Mrs. Morris's.

Crinum bulbispermum, Mrs. Jordan's Red.

Crinum bulbispermum, Mrs. Jordan's White.

Parts of Flowers

A member of the Pacific Bulb Society on-line list pointed out this link to Wikipedia:

Picture of the Day for June 11, 2010

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, June 05, 2010, 5:45 PM EDT - May Flowers

Iris

In the Siberica group of irises, a standout is Iris sanguinea. I have one particular variety that has made a huge clump over the years. Unlike many other irises, this one survives my neglect and still blooms every year in springtime.

Iris sanguinea 'Kamyama'

Even earlier to bloom is Iris lactea, distinguished mainly by its flowers blooming down in the foliage. The tall bearded iris have all bloomed too, of course.

Scadoxus

These bulbs in the Amaryllis Family are native to Southern Africa. I am very fond of Scadoxus puiniceus, which is very easy to grow in the greenhouse and lath house, and which blooms reliably in February before the leaves have developed. Scadoxus multiflorus katherinae, the pretty sister of the multiflorus multiflorus found in many bulb catalogs, is harder for me to bring to flower. When it blooms, it blooms in July here.

A plant acquaintance in South Africa has crossed these two species, and then crossed their offspring. Seeds from the offspring, the F₂ generation, have started to bloom for me. Here is one of the first two to bloom, as it appeared in late May in my lath house. So far, the February bloom time and the July bloom time of the grandparents seem to have produced a median bloom time in these grandkids.

Scadoxus [puniceus x katherinae] F2

Proiphys

This is a genus of the Amaryllis Family that is native to Australia. I have had Proiphys amboinensis for years. It blooms in mid-summer, when it blooms, and is usually deciduous in the greenhouse in winter. A second species in this genus, Proiphys cunninghamii, came my way a few years ago; and now it is blooming.

Proiphys cunninghamii
The flowers are about 1½ inch across.

Note that in the picture above, the center flower that you are staring straight into is a little unusual: it is a polytepal, having four petals and four sepals instead of the usual three of each.

I kept this one watered and growing in the warm greenhouse all last winter. Now both plants are in bloom, so it must have liked the treatment it received. I'm cross-pollinating the two blooming plants in hopes of getting a few seeds. This plant deserves to be better known.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, June 04, 2010, 8:30 PM EDT - Hymenocallis

Another Contribution from Argentina

The white American spider lilies, Hymenocallis, are one of my favorite bulb groups. Found from the Southeastern USA and the Mississippi Valley through Central America, some of them make great landscape plants in mild climates while others are great pot plants that grow in summer and sleep through the winter. One species, Hymenocallis occidentalis (a.k.a. caroliniana) is even hardy outdoor in the ground here in central Indiana.

Here is a photo from Mariano Saviello of his plant of Hymenocallis sonorensis in bloom. Up here in the northern hemisphere, this species blooms at the end of summer. I guess May is pretty much the end of summer in Argentina.

Hymenocallis sonoriensis grows along streams and valleys in Sonora, Mexico. An easy Hymenocallis to grow and bloom in mid autumn (Southern Hemisphere).

My own plants are just starting to grow, except for the lone clump of Hymenocallis liriosme growing at the south end of my greenhouse. It has already started to bloom.

Hymenocallis liriosme
Growing outdoors in the ground, but very close to the greenhouse wall!

I'm going to test several plants from H. liriosme out in the open garden. Maybe, with lots of mulch, some of them will survive the winter here.

We have bracketed the Hymenocallis growing season right here, from the last flowers of the summer in Argentina to the first flowers of the summer in Indiana.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 8:30 PM EDT - Absent Blog

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

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, April 29, 2010, 10:30 AM EDT - Taxonomy

The Revolution in Families

They have been having a discussion, in the Pacific Bulb Society list, about the new classifications of the Angiosperms. Family names have been in a flux since the start of the use of DNA sequences in reconstructing phylogenetic relationships. This goes back around 15 years, as I recall. Oddly enough, the last pre-DNA revision, in the 1980s, anticipated many of the changes that the DNA sequences forced plant scientists to make in the classification of flowering plants. The people causing the ruckus have reported their conclusions in Angiosperm Phylogeny Group III, 2009.

You may have noticed that, whereas almost every monocot flower other than iris and orchids was in the family Liliaceae in the old days, most of them are now not even in the same order (Liliales), let alone in the family Liliaceae itself. Most of our favorites (well, my favorites anyway) are now in the order Asparagales, including both orchids (Orchidaceae) and irises (Iridiaceae).

This includes the Amaryllidaceae (Amaryllis family) and its close relatives Agapanthaceae (Agapanthus family) and Alliaceae (onion family). In fact, these three families are now combined into a single larger family, currently called simply Amaryllidaceae. I'm gratified that the name Amaryllidaceae is retained, but a bit sad for the alliums at losing their "Alliaceae."

Other families affected include Trilliaceae, the Trillium family, which is now included in Melanthiaceae. Of course, 30 years ago, it was in Liliaceae.

Hemerocallis, the daylilies, for a while enjoyed its own family, Hemerocallidaceae; now it is submerged into the family XANTHORRHOEACEAE as subfamily Hemerocallidoideae. Along with it are Asphodeloideae and Xanthorrhoeoideae.

Hyacinthaceae seems to have been submerged deeply into Asparagaceae, the Asparagus family. Agavaceae seems to be in there with it. I worry that the new family concept of Asparagaceae is becoming the same catch-all that the old concept of Liliaceae was.

Wrong Names

A related lament concerns the reluctance of the gardening world, or at least of those folks in the media who create verbage and catalogs, to recognize that nomenclature has changed over the past 100-150 years. As noted in the Pacific Bulb Society list, catalogs still list "Cyclamen neapolitanum," a name that has been obsolete and superceeded by Cyclamen hederifolium for the last 50 or 75 years.

Then there is my favorite wrong name, "Amaryllis" (i.e., as in Dutch Hybrid Amaryllis) used for bulbs in the genus Hippeastrum. Botanically, Amaryllis is a small genus in South Africa containing one well-known species, Amaryllis belladonna, and perhaps one or two obscure and very rare other species. It grows very well in South Africa and in Southern California. A few people grow it in other Mediterranean climates as well, but it is relatively unknown outside those places.

On the other hand, Hippeastrum, as we all know here, is a genus native to South America. The wild species of Hippeastrum were turned into the modern "Dutch Hybrid Amaryllis" over the past century or two, mainly I suppose by the Dutch. They are definitely spectacular, but folks, they sure aren't "Amaryllis"!!!!

Common Names

Common names, such as Naked Lady, Autumn Crocus, Daffodil, Spring Beauty, Jack in the Pulpit, Trout Lily, and countless more, are likely to be misleading once you get out of the narrow geographic location where you learned the common name in the first place. Different countries, and especially, different continents, often mean quite different flowers but use familiar names to label them.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Sunday, April 25, 2010, 11:15 AM EDT - The Hippeastrum Database

What Is It

One reader of this blog (that must make at least six now!) inquired about the Hippeastrum Database, which I have been referring to without ever explaining what it was. Sorry about that! I'll remedy that omission right here and now.

The Hippeastrum Database is a table of the recognized species of Hippeastrum. It also contains some references to the original descriptions of the species in the scientific literature. Finally, there are some supplementary care and culture notes for a few of the species.

These materials were assembled by several individuals over some years, and I put them together in one big file. The complete database is available only in Microsoft Access 2000 file format. That format can be imported into later versions of Access, but not into earlier versions. A less complete form is available as a Microsoft Excel 2000 workbook, as well.

Be warned that I have not proofed these tables since I put them together. No one has called me on any blatant errors so far, but I'm sure there are some in there. Let me know if you find any, please: [Report errors in database].

Where to Find it

One set of files is in the Yahoo Hippeastrumspeciesgroup, http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Hippeastrumspeciesgroup/. You may have to get a Yahoo user ID and join the group to get to it.

Another set of the files is in the Yahoo IBSMembers group, http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IBSMEMBERS/, which is open only to dues-paid members of the International Bulb Society.

In both cases, the actual database files are in the Files section of the respective groups.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saurday, April 24, 2010, 3:15 PM EDT - Back to Trillium Country

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

I spent a week in the Smokies looking at Trillium again, as I did a year ago. As it seemed here in Indiana, Spring appeared to come all at once in the Smokies, rather than stretching out for 6 to 8 weeks as it usually does. They were less than a week ahead of us down there. The Trillium were probably at peak bloom, in the lower altitudes, the week I was there (April 13-19). Some of the Trillium simile flowers were starting to go over by the time we left to drive back to Indiana.

This year, I concentrated on Trillium simile and T. erectum, mainly outside the National Park. We visited a colony of simile near the holotype locality, which is simply Tryon, North Carolina. We also visited Nantahala Gorge, N.C., where there are probably more T. simile than anywhere else.

Trillium simile
© copyright 2010 by Shields Gardens Ltd. All rights reserved.

We went in search of true T. erectum album, not mixed with simile. This took us on narrow, rough gravel mountain roads past Max Patch mountain and other places east and northeast of the National Park. We saw a few T. erectum album, but not the stands one sees inside the National Park.

Trillium erectum album
© copyright 2010 by Shields Gardens Ltd. All rights reserved.

Trillium simile is clearly closely related to T. erectum album. Just how closely is anybody's guess until we convince someone to do some detailed DNA sequence comparisons between the two species. There is still an obvious cline between typical T. simile in the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge area at about 1200 ft. elevation, and T. erectum album above 3000 ft. elevation on up to 5000 ft at Newfound Gap.

There were plenty of Trillium luteum in bloom around Gatlinburg, but we ignored those this time. We paid more attention to the T. cuneatum south and east of the National Park. We spotted one with exceptionally wide petals along Bald River Falls road. The plant is still there.

Trillium cuneatum with wide petals. Compare the dime!
© copyright 2010 by Shields Gardens Ltd. All rights reserved.

There are wide variations in the color of the petals of T. cuneatum, from the dark red of this one above to shades of bronze to even an occasional yellow one. These are often growing within three or four feet of one another.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, April 08, 2010, 6:05 PM EDT - Hippeastrum Species. V.

Hippeastrum puniceum (Lamarck) Voss

"Reported in tropical America, from Mexico and West Indies to Bolivia and Brazil. The specimen shown came from Puerto Rico (see picture of the habitat). Flowers in spring." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum puniceum in habitat in Puerto Rico.
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database has these notes: Found in tropical America. Evergreen but dormant in winter. Synonyms equestre, spathaceum, occidentale, pyrrochroum, roezli, dubia, Amaryllis belladonna, haywardii, alberti, amaru.

---

Hippeastrum petiolatum Pax in Engl.

"Reported in the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones (departments of Cainguas, Capital and El Dorado). It was once reported in the province of Tucumán, until it was discovered that the species seen was the red form of H. aglaiae. Traub described two different species: H. flammingerum for the species found in Santa Ana, province of Misiones; and H. petiolatum for the species found in the province of Corrientes (Monte Justo, department of Santo Tomé). It is know nowadays as H. striatum var. petiolatum, as it is believed to be a variation of the brazilian species H. striatum. It is a triploid self sterile species which reproduces only by little bulbils that grow around the mother bulb. As this species grows in tropical places near rivers from north-east Argentina and Brazil (there are some reports in Uruguay, as well), in the rainy season these bulbils are driven by surface water flows and travel to sites remote from the original bulb, which ensures not only the spread but also the distribution of this species." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum petiolatum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database has the following information: Found in Argentina and Brazil. Has ploidy up to 2n = 55. Synonyms include argilagae, flammigerum, gertianum. Dormant 3 months in winter.

---

Hippeastrum puniceum var. alberti

"One of the double flower Hippeastrum. Baker (1888) suggested that this form should be placed under H. reginae, but H. reginae does not have the orange flowers that this species has, and the plant characters indicate that this form is allied to H. puniceum. The tepaltube is obscured on account of the double form. Is cultivated in US, mainly in Florida where it has been used in the production of double hybrids commercial Hippeastrum." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum puniceum alberti
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum puniceum alberti
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

---

I'm indebted to Mariano Saviello for these pictures and his comments on the various species and for his permission to use them in this blog. This concludes the species from Mariano. I'll continue with other species that I have or know a little about.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Monday, April 05, 2010, 6:05 PM EDT - Hippeastrum Species. IV.

Hippeastrum angustifolium Pax in Engler

"Reported in the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones (departments of Apóstoles, Candelaria, Capital, Concepción and L. N. Alem) Blooming period: September-November (Southern hemisphere)." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum angustifolium
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum angustifolium
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database notes that this species is found in swamps in Argentina. It is winter deciduous. It must have wet environment, and requires freezing temperatures to initiate flowering in mature plants. Contradicting this another note states that it grows in sugar cane fields; blooms in wet season. Does NOT require frost to flower! Bulbs must however be very large to bloom.

---

Hippeastrum canterai Arech.

Reported in the departments of Riviera, region of Tanqueras. In low humid lands, by lakes and on shores near Cuchilla Negra.

Hippeastrum canterai
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database notes that it is found in Uruguay and is a winter deciduous species.

---

Hippeastrum ferreyrae (Traub) Gereau & Brako

"Reported in the department of Loreto (Perú), on the Isla Santa Maria, near Yurimangas, Huallaga Valley, alt. 150-200 meters in the forest. It differs from H. reginae in the longer tepaltube and in having spathe valves shorter than the pedicels; and from H. belladona in the longer pedicels and the absence of para perigone. (cellphone pictures, sorry!)" -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum ferreyae
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum ferreyae
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database says this is from Peru and is evergreen. It is related to puniceum and to equestre (a.k.a. belladonna).

---

I'm indebted to Mariano Saviello for these pictures and his comments on the various species and for his permission to use them in this blog. There are still a few more to come from Mariano.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Sunday, April 04, 2010, 11:35 AM EDT - Hippeastrum Species. III.

H. ambiguum Herbert ex Hook.

"Said by many to be a synonym of H. vittatum var. tweedianum, H. ambigumm (syn. H. elegans var. ambiguum or H. solandriflorum var. conspicua) was reported in Lima (Perú) and Ecuador (Cuenca, where the specimen from the picture was collected). Bloom period: late spring." -- Mariano Caviello

Hippeastrum ambiguum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum ambiguum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database has the following notes: Dormant 3 months in winter, but evergreen. Keep moist while dormant. Found in Bolivia; Peru; Rio Cuenca, Ecuador.

---

H. guarapuavicum (Ravenna) Van Scheepen

"Syn. H. vittatum var. guarapuavicum: Reported in the departments of Candelaria and Capital (province of Misiones, Argentina) and Brazil. Bloom period: September (Southern hemisphere). I think it is the same species that Mauro has in his website as H. vittatum." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum guarapuavicum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum guarapuavicum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database notes only that it is found in Brazil and Argentina.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, April 02, 2010, 1:05 PM EDT - Hippeastrum Species. II.

Hippeastrum iguazuanum (Ravenna) T.R. Dudley & M. Williams

"Reported in the departments of Guaraní, Iguazú, Obera, San Ignacio, San Pedro (province of Misiones, Argentina). Bloom period: September-October (Southern hemisphere)." -- Mariano Saviello

The Hippeastrum Database notes the following: Native to Brazil. Winter deciduous, flowers in Spring.

Hippeastrum iguazuanum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum iguazuanum
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

---

Hippeastrum teyucuarense (Ravenna) Van Scheepen

"Reported in the department of San Ignacio (province of Misiones, Argentina). Bloom period: September (Southern hemisphere). H. teyucuarense has a vivid orange brick veined flowers and is extremely rare in cultivation. It used to grow in a single hill called "Rock of Teyucuaré"(picture below), although is reported another location, as well, but local people used to dig it and take it home as a garden flower. As a result you see it in gardens forming clumps and all is heavily virused. It sets no seed and it seems the offsetting form is the only one around. There is something to take into account and it is leaf shape. It is very irregular that the same species has two forms of foliage. This said because relation to H. iguazuanum (but not the same species) or any other, although the flowers show relation (they belong to the same Section) the foliage is different: one has flat strap like leaves and the other (H. iguazuanum) has a distinct shape, channeled and with the edges folded backwards." -- Mariano Saviello

Hippeastrum teyucuarense
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

The Hippeastrum database has the following: Related to iguazuanum, rubropictum, and curitibanum.

The Rock of Teyucuaré
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 9:15 AM EDT - Hippeastrum Species. I.

Hippeastrum parodii in Habitat

Mariano Saviello is a microbiologist in Argentina who is very interested in Hippeastrum. He is kindly sharing with us pictures and information about some of the species he has seen in cultivation and in nature.

Mariano writes about H. parodii:

"The existence of H. parodii was proved in the provinces of Salta, Tucumán and Catamarca as a wild plant, and in Tucumán, Catamarca, and Córdoba in ornamental culture. There would be reported two different ecotypes in the wild: a boreal H. parodii in the North of Tucumán and in the South of Salta (700-800 masl) which flowers before its leaves grow, or when they have not developed completely, and a southern H. parodii (1000-2600 masl), which flowers when the leaves are well developed. In both cases the color varies from a greenish white to a creamy white (also pure white is accepted). Taking this into account, many people also think that one of these forms could be the H. euryphylla described by Piero Ravenna; as it is not acceptable that a same unicoloured species has so many variations in its main color (green, creamy, white and yellow). H. euryphylla can be distinguished from the other Argentinian species from the Macropodastrum sub-genus (white flowers with long tubes), by the light yellow-creme flowers, and the very short style arms.

"In late 2009 it was also reported in Bolivia , but I am pretty sure these might be new populations of the almost extinguished H. viridiflorum more than a Bolivian population of H. parodii. The pictures sent were taken in the province of Tucumán." -- Mariano Saviello, Buenos Aires

Hippeastrum parodii
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

Hippeastrum parodii
© copyright 2010 by Mariano Saviello. All rights reserved.

My database of Hippeastrum species has the following information: It is a vigorous species with 6 to 10 flowers in the umbel. It's habitat climate is hot, dry desert. It is dormant for 5 to 6 months in winter. Note that it is in subgenus Macropodastrum, as Mariano mentions above.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

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Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:15 PM EDT - Hippeastrum Pictures

Blooming Hippeastrum

Hippeastrum aglaiae is native to Argentina. It occurs in nature in two forms, a pink flowered form and this cream form. This is one of several plants grown from seed that are starting to bloom right now. The parents were two plants collected in the wild by Len Doran, his Clone A and his Clone C.

Hippeastrum aglaiae

Hippeastrum papilio is in bloom, too. H. papilio is native to Brazil, and this bulb came from Charles Gorenstein in about 1997.

Hippeastrum papilio

For comparison, here is one last seedling of Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii] in bloom:

Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii]

If you compare this flower to the others of Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii], you will see the striking similarity between the siblings. This illustrates the relative uniformity in the offspring when two distinct species are crossed. You can expect much greater variability in the progeny when two hybrids are crossed.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 8:05 AM EDT - Repotting Amaryllis

Time to Divide Hippeastrum

That's what I'm doing, repotting Hippeastrum. Those that have not made much new growth and have not flowered so far this spring are my targets.

I have three pots of Hippeastrum papilio. One, my #270, is from a bulb I got from I.B.S. or at least from Charlie Gorenstein, in May 1997. To say that I have neglected it is an understatement! It is blooming right now, probably for the very first time in my greenhouse, and its pot contains all of three or four offsets. That is not much to show for 13 years in my care. It is going to look spectacular, so I will repot it after it has finished flowering and its seeds have ripened. I'll also post a picture here once it has fully opened.

The other two pots are my #1147, which came from the IBS Seed Exchange in 1998. Its parentage: [Lee Poulsen's papilio X Boyce Tankersley's papilio]. There seems to be a total of 10 or so bulbs now, and I think all are from separate seeds in that small batch. One of these is about to bloom right now, the largest bulb, and it is probably the one that was the seed or pod parent of my [papilio x mandonii] hybrids.

I plan to cross papilio #270 and papilio #1147 and grow on the seedlings. I think I have ignored papilio far too long! Brent and Becky have them for under $20 per bulb. Tell them I sent you! (That's a joke; I haven't seen Brent in years, and whoever answers their phone would not have a clue who I was.)

Today I repotted the non-flowering pot, seven bulbs, into individual 1-gallon or 1/2-gallon pots. They were just too crowded, and I hope to get them to bloom more this way.

I also repotted my Hippeastrum argentinum, from the Doran Collection. It has never bloomed for me so far, and the one medium sized bulb had split into about five smaller bulbs. I repotted each of them into their own separate pots. Whereas papilio is evergreen and needs little dormancy to flower, argentinum needs 6 to 8 months of dry rest. It is native to a hot, dry region in Argentina. I have probably not been giving it the correct treatment for dormancy.

Hippeastrum aulicum should not bloom this time of year anyway, so this is as good a time as any to repot it. I have one pot of the regular form of aulicum, originally from Dash in Australia, that has stopped blooming in recent years. I'm sure it needs to be repotted, and I will separate and pot up the offsets at the same time.

My Hippeastrum [aglaiae Clone A x aglaiae Clone C] seedlings have reached bloom size now, and some are already in flower. The two parents have not bloomed in recent years, so they definitely need to be repotted. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

I think I should cross my Hippeastrum brasilianum with papilio, too. Both are almost evergreen, and brasilianum is fragrant. Who knows what we'll get? (Well, I'm pretty sure Alan Meerow knows exactly what we'll get, but I haven't seen pictures of his diploid Hippeastrum breeding results, so they'll still be new to me.)

If you have an old Dutch amaryllis sitting around not blooming, try repotting it in fresh potting mix. Clean away all the old dead roots to give the new healthy roots room to grow. Pot any loose offsets up in their own pots; leave smaller offsets attached to the mother bulb until they are about half the mother's diameter. Remember to start feeding each bulb after it starts growing again, and feed it regularly thereafter (see my discussion of fertilizer, Feb. 2010.)

Your bulbs in pots really need to be repotted occasionally. I don't repot mine often enough, mostly because I have too many to keep up with them all the time. I actually enjoy repotting, and I'm missing out on a lot of potential bloom by not keeping up with the repotting.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, March 21, 2010, 12:05PM EDT - Spring Is Here

Clivia Weekend

It's been a busy two weeks since I posted here the last time, and we had a busy weekend on the 13th and 14th. About 16 people came for the Clivia open House and the Midwest Clivia Club meeting. This in spite of continuous rain all day Saturday.

On Sunday a few of us drove over to Kevin Akins' greenhouse in Plain City, Ohio. Kevin's plants were also in full bloom. It was a neat weekend. I took some pictures of some of Kevn's nicest plants in bloom, which I'll share with you here one of these days soon.

Spring Flowers

My most spectacular spring flower is in the greenhouse -- Hippeastrum brasilianum. It is a white trumpet and fragrant. My form has frilly edges and a maroon band along the midrib on the outside of the sepals. Actually, undulate is the better term for the margins of the tepals.

Hippeastrum brasilianum

Outdoors, the spring flowers are a bit more modest: Trillium nivale and Galanthus nivalis, the former just starting, the latter about finished. Trillium nivale is a dwarf plant, only 3 or 4 inches tall, native to Indiana and adjacent states.

The T. nivale in my garden are from Illinois, and these for some reason do better here than the ones Gene Bush sent me from southern Indiana.

Trillium nivale

Some people recognize the Indiana populations of Trillium nivale as a slightly different ecotype from other populations. The Indiana populations may require more limestone in their environment than some other T. nivale. I don't know what the reason is, but the Indiana nivale barely hang on here, while the Illinois nivale thrive in my little woodland garden.

There are volunteer Crocus coming up and blooming in various places around the garden.

Crocus Volunteers

Can anyone tell me what they might be? Is Crocus tommasinianus a reasonable guess?

Bulbocodium vernum, probably now classified under Colchicum, so Colchicum vernum, is blooming. I think my clump has been gradually dwindling in numbers, so I had better shop around for some more bulbs this summer. This is fairly hardy here, and makes a nice early spring show of pink. Since it's small and close to the ground, plant them close to where you will be walking by.

Bulbocodium vernum or Colchicum vernum

The dwarf Reticulata irises are also blooming now.

Iris reticulata cultivars in bloom.

It looks like I need to re-do my metal labels in this bed. That is a chore for sub-optimal weather conditions, since most of the work can be done inside the house, next to a nice cup of hot tea (Rooibos, preferably) and some music on the hi fi (anyone besides me remember the Kingston Trio?)

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Sunday, March 07, 2010, 9:30 AM EST - Clivia Bloom Continues

Clivia Flowers

One of my favorite Clivia plants is starting to bloom: Conway's 'Tessa'. As far as I'm concerned, I consider 'Tessa' the archetypal peach clivia.

Clivia Conway's 'Tessa' with flowers just starting to open

'Tessa' is thought to be in the "European Peach" genetic group. I suppose this gene arose in the Belgian clivia greenhouses. It is very similar to Solomone's large peach called 'Apricot', which is also starting to bloom. The flowers of 'Apricot' at this early stage in blooming appear to be larger than 'Tessa' flowers, nearly the same shade of pink-peach, and perhaps a bit more tulip-shaped. I should have a picture in a couple more days.

The "Star" Red in the greenhouse this year is a seedling from Keith Hammett's cross 82065.

Keith Hammett's seed produced this rich red flower.

Conway's 'Sara' is blooming, and the flowers seem to be a light rose pink color with hints of yellow. This plant is still recovering from the trauma of arriving here in mid-winter several years ago, and this is its first attempt at blooming. I'll try to document the colors as best I can.

Here is a Solomone Pink that is impressive in its pinkness. I don't see a lot of pink in most pink clivias.

Clivia Solomone Pink #2013

Chubb 'Pretty Pink' is blooming. This one is very pale, not much different from my ['Sunrise Sunset' x 'Tessa'] #2539.A. The colors are so delicate that it is hard to say whether they are peach or pink.

Clivia 'Chubb Pretty Pink' in its first bloom here in Westfield

The sun has been shining that last two days, so I have not tried to use the color charts. We are due for a week of showers and clouds, perfect weather for applying color charts! Still, I doubt that even under the best of conditions, I would be able to analyze the complex blend of many colors that is evident in this example of Chubb's 'Pretty Pink'.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 10:00 AM EST - More Clivia Blooms

Color Chart Comment

Annalee wrote as follows: "Thanks for posting these color charts on PBS [Pacific Bulb Society]. In my experience, going back to the first RHS about 50 years ago and the colors on many other references, one of the main reasons that the charts don't "work" is that the colors on the tepals of most flowers are blends--and also that the blends do not always reside in a single layer of the flower surface, but may be in 2 or 3 layers, both water soluble and not water-soluble, with different refraction values. A simple example is bearded iris which may be visually blue but photographing purple. In the Oncocyclus (aril hybrids included) the signal spot which is visually black -- turns out to be a deep red, either when dissolved in various alcohol/ acetone/water/ oil mixes or looked at through the signal spot on the falls when pointed directly at the sun.

However, these colors for clivia do seem to allow for specifing blends of colos to a degree not possible before. Neat! Thanks."

So kudos to the guys in the Cape Clivia Club, South Africa, who put this color chart together!

How Tough Are Clivia?

Garry wrote that his offset of Conway's 'Sara' has beens struggling just to survive. My response: I have found that the Conway plants are the weakest in my collection, while the Solomone are probably the strongest. I think it is because Dave Conway selected plants solely for their interesting flowers and then propagated them vegetatively. Joe Solomone propagated by seeds rather than vegetatively and selected plants first on their ability to survive and only later for flower colors.

Victorian Peach plants (another seed strain) seem to be intermediate in their vigor. They mostly offset freely, but are more susceptible than Solomone plants to fungi and rots.

I think that there are lessons for us here.

More Clivia Blooming

More Clivia flowers are opening every day. This is a wonderful time of year in the Clivia greenhouse.

Clivia ['Abigail' x 'Doris']
First flowers to open

I had hoped for a deep, rich red color. I fear the climate in Indiana is not conducive to development of strong red colors in Clivia.

Clivia 'Chubb Peach'

The Chubb Peach plants are a selected line grown from seed.

Clivia "Ita's Pastel Spider"

This came from a yard in an older residential neighborhood in Los Angeles. The homeowner's name was Ita. The narrow petals and sepals earn it the name "spider." The light salmon orange color warrants the description "pastel."

Clivia [Solomone Pinks #2014 x #2010]
Seedling No. 2182.A

The two parents of this seedling were both light pink with very little yellow underneath. This is a nice medium peach color, clearer and lighter than the color of "Ita's Pastel Spider."

There should be lots more pictures of Clivia flowers coming in the next couple of weeks. I also have a couple more new Hippeastrum in bud, so they are coming along too. My trusty old Nikon D70 died on me, so I bought a new Nikon D90 camera body over the weekend. Today's images were all taken yesterday with the old lenses on the new D90 body.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Friday, February 26, 2010, 1:00 PM EST - Color Charts Anyone?

Weather

We've had snow longer this winter than I can recall before. I'm thoroughly sick of it! It's costing a fortune to heat the greenhoiuses in this cold weather -- every day it has been 10 to 15 degrees colder than normal for this time of year.

Color Charts

The Cape Clivia Club of Cape Town, South Africa, developed the first color chart specifically designed for flowers in the genus Clivia in 2003.

Cape Clivia Club's First Color Chart

This chart was quite simple (but not simple to develop!) and marked a first step in the Clivia community trying to define colors to a standard. It was tailored to colors found in Clivia flowers, because existing color charts proved to be unsatisfactory when applied to Clivia.

The newest color chart I have is Color Chart II from the Cape Clivia Club in Cape Town. I think it is going to be very useful. It is still available from certain Clivia clubs around the world.

Cape Clivia Club's Color Chart II

The classic horticultural color chart is that from the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK. I have the Third Edition, that cost me around $150 on special, 10 or 15 years ago. There is now a fourth version of it, more expensive. It can be obtained from the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK.

The RHS Colour Chart Third Edition is comprised of four swatches containing about 50 cards each.

Each card contains four variations on a particular color.

That gives you about 800 tints, shades, and blends of colors to choose from. It is still a real challenge to precisely define the colors in a flower, even with the best horticultural color charts available.

In the USA, you can get the Cape Clivia Club Color Chart II from the North American Clivia Society. Australians should check with the Aussie clivia society. Elsewhere in the world, contact the Cape Clivia Club in Cape Town.

I tried to photograph a few Clivia flowers with an apporpriate card from CCC Color Chart II.

Note that the different reds in the card were not well differentiated by the digital image. The human eye does a better job of that.

It works better with these peach blends, but I think one would have to take the individual petal off the flower to use the color chart most effectively. I didn't do that when I took these pictures because I'm not ready to start destroying blooms this early in the season!

The directions with the RHS color chart tell us to use "north light," which translates roughly to "get out of the direct sun and into some shade" to read the colors accurately.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 1:00 PM EST - Clivia Hybrids

Breeding with Peaches

Five years ago, I pollinated David Conway's 'Sunrise Sunset' with pollen from his very fine peach 'Tessa'. The attached photo shows the first flower on the first seedling to bloom from that cross, ['Sunrise Sunset' x 'Tessa']. It's going to be a very nice peach, or so it looks to me. All the seedlings in that cross will have the number 2539. This particular plant is distinguished by adding the suffix "A" to the number. After more flowers open, I'll post another picture.

Clivia ['Sunrise Sunset' x 'Tessa'] #2539.A

The Parents

Clivia 'Sunrise Sunset' is a nice yellow with orange edging and spotting of the petals wherever physically damaged. Conway's 'Tessa' is probably know to all: an outstanding peach Clivia. All the seedlings in the aforementioned cross were green (i.e., unpigmented leaf bases) when small. I suspect that when one crosses a peach or pink with another peach or pink, or even yellow as in this case, and the seedlings are plain green (no red pigment in the leaf bases), the offspring will flower in shades of peach. That's my guess from one flower blooming on one cross. How's that for generalizing?

Clivia 'Sunrise Sunset'

Clivia 'Tessa' with an unusual 5X5 multitepal blossom

Other crosses made with peaches in the past few years, as yet unbloomed, include the following:

#2397 ['Victorian Peach' #2194.D x 'Tessa'], all the seedlings had plain green leaves. From 2008.

#2396 ['Victorian Peach' #2194.A x 'Tessa'], all the seedlings had plain green leaves. From 2008.

#2402 ['Victorian Peach' #2194.K x 'Victorian Peach' #2194.D], all the seedlings had plain green leaves. From 2008.

It is not a wild extrapolation to expect all the plants from the three cross immediately above to produce peach flowers.

Red Parents

#2401 [Solomone Red #2293 x Kevin Akins Red #2292], all the seedlings had red pigmented bases on the leaves. From 2008.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Click here to [Respond or comment on this entry] by e-mail. All comments are private unless you give permission to post them here.

Monday, February 22, 2010, 1:00 PM EST - Arisaema in February

Starting Seeds

This is the time to start Arisaema from seeds. The Arisaema Enthusiasts Group (AEG) is about to have its annual seed distribution. To participate, sign up for Arisaema-L and send your donation of $10 to $20 to AEG.

Arisaema seed are mostly warm germinators. Take the seed you have and soak it in water for a few days. Change the water daily. Then sow the seeds on the surface of your potting mix and cover with a half-inch (10-15 mm.) layer of sand or grit. I use "Granigrit" crushed granite chick starter grit for this covering layer. I then set the pot in a tub of water and let the potting mix soak up water till the surface is moist. Finally, the pot is placed in a saucer or tray and set under fluorescent lights. Water from below and don't let the seeds dry out. Germination may take from a week or two to a few months.

Once germination starts, keep the seedlings watered and growing as long as you can. Start to add soluble fertilizer to your waterings when most of the seeds seem to have germinated. I use N-P-K 20-10-20 at 100 ppm nitrogen. See my discussion of feeding plants on February 17, 2010 for details.

Hastening Maturity

It is quite feasible to speed the growth cycle of Arisaema. After 3 to 4 months of growth, let the pot go dry. Once it is dry and the leaves have yellowed off, place the pot, still dry, in the refrigerator (40°F, ca. 4°C) for three months. Then take it out, repot if necessary, and place the pot in a warm, well-lighted place and start watering and feeding again. This effectively crams two years of growth and development into one year, so it should cut the time from planting seed to first flowering in half.

The summer phase of growth can be outdoors. The plants need high or broken shade and plenty of moisture. Just don't let the pot sit in standing water. In cold weather, the growth phase can be in a heated greenhouse if you have one. Otherwise, a warm, sunny window will do just fine. I put my pots in the basement under fluorescent lights (about 6 inches above the leaves, on a timer set for 16 hrs per day). If they bloom under the lights, move them someplace where you can enjoy the flowers every day.

Hardy Arisaema

Arisaema triphyllum is native to much of the eastern United States. Arisaema dracontium is as well, and both are native here in Indiana where I live. Other species will grow and survive here as well.

My favorite is probably the showy A. sikokianum, which survived and bloomed in my woodland garden for several years. It disappeared a couple years ago, so I am replacing it this spring. At the moment, the new tubers are resting in the fridge until the ground warms up somewhat.

Arisaema sikokianum in the woodland garden

I've also had relatively good luck with A. ringens, although it too disappeared a year or so ago. I think we had a very bad winter for Arisaema around here. There is a nice fat tuber of A. ringens also waiting in the fridge for spring to come.

Very hardy and still going strong, in almost full sun, is Arisaema heterophyllum. It is not as showy as sikokianum or ringens, but it hangs on and makes its presence felt at the sunny edge of the patch of woods.

Others that survived and bloomed for more than one season include A. kishidae, A. sazensoo, A. thunbergii, and A. urushima

Arisaema kishidae in the woodland garden

Tender Arisaema in Pots

I grow Arisaema yunnanense aridum in pots, since I'm not sure it can survive our winters outdoors. I use the exact technigue described above for hastening growth to grow yunnanense permanently in pots. Last summer, outdoors in the lath house, I hand-pollinated yunnanense and harvested a nice batch of seeds. Some are germinating right now under lights in the basement. The rest I donated to the AEG seed exchange.

Yunnanense is not a showy plant at all, even less so than heterophyllum. I keep it around as a curiosity. On the other hand, I'm going to attempt to grow A. fargesii as a pot plant, since it has survived the winters outdoors but never increased in size and definitely is not going to bloom for me here as an outdoor plant. A. fargesii should have a very nice bloom, when it blooms. I have a 10-inch azalea pot with 3 tubers of fargesii in full leaf under the lights in the basement right now. I repotted and started them up again just before Christmas, and I'll try to keep them growing for another month before I allow them to go dormant again and put them back in the fridge. I should have blooms in another year if things go well.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, February 20, 2010, 3:00 PM EST - Clivia Crosses

Types of Crosses

We made two principal types of Clivia crosses last year: 1) Using peach parents; and 2) Using red parents. "Peach" encompasses pink and pastel, as well as real peaches like 'Victoria Peach'. "Red" is anything red, light red, red-orange, or even occasionally deep orange. So far, we have seen light to medium reds and red-oranges, but no real red colors on Clivia flowers here in our greenhouse. In Indiana, and in the Northeastern USA in general, there is simply not enough sunshine in winter to bring the real red coloration to the plants growing here.

Fertility of Crosses

We started planting the seeds from our Spring 2009 Clivia crosses in December. We are approaching the two-month mark after planting, so it's time to take a look at the initial germination results. I'm looking for two separate things: 1) The percentage of germination at this point in time; and 2) The red pigmentation or lack of it in the leaf base and the epicotyl and hypocotyl of the germinated seeds.

Cross #2536: [Solomone Watercolor Pink #2005 x 'Victorian Peach' #2194.K]. This is a "peach cross," or at least I had hoped so. Of 36 seeds planted 14 December 2009, none (0%) have germinated. 'Victorian Peach' #2194.K is a very pale peach color.

Cross #2550: [Conway's 'Mary Helen' x Solomone Pink #2011]. This is a "peach cross," or at least pastel, I hope; I'm not so sure what will come out of it. There have been 7 germinations (44%) in the 16 seeds planted 31 Dec. 2009. One seedling has a green stem; the other 6 have pigmented shoots (hypocotyl + epicotyl).

Cross #2538: [Solomone Pink #2011 x 'Cameron Peach' #2201]. Of the 36 seeds planted around 16 Dec. 2009, only 3 (8%) have germinated so far. All 3 seedlings have the red pigmentation.

Cross #2545: ['Victorian Peach' #2194.D x 'Victorian Peach' #2194.E]. Clearly I expect to get peach clivias from this cross. Out of 33 seeds planted on 26 Dec. 2009, only 7 (21%) have germinated so far. All have green (i.e., unpigmented) stems. Both parents are what I classify as "dark peach."

Cross #2544: ['Cameron Peach #2201 x Solomone Pink #2010]. There have been 19 germinations (53%) among the 36 seeds planted on 27 Dec. 2009. Of these, 1 is green while the other 18 have pigmented stems.

Not numbered: ['Victorian Peach' #2194.I x 'Cameron Peach' #2201] produced no seeds at all.

Cross #2548: [Pen Henry Red #1414.B x #1664.B=(Miné x Bing Wiese Green Throat)]. Red flowered plants are expected. Out of 36 seeds planted on 24 December 2009, 18 (50%) have germinated to date. All 18 seedlings have the red pigmentation.

Cross #2523: [Conway's 'Elizabeth' x Solomone Red]. So far, 16 seeds (44%) have germinated of the 36 planted on 15 Nov. 2009. All are pigmented. 'Elizabeth' is a medium red or red-orange, on a larger than average flower.

Past Years' Seedlings

One plant of ['Sunrise Sunset' x 'Tessa'] is in bud. It looks like it will be peach colored. All the seedlings from this cross had green stems. 'Sunrise Sunset' is a good yellow color with scattered Type 2 Yellow-like orange edges to the petals.

Two plants of ['Abigail' x 'Doris'] are in scape. Blooming plants of the same parents were seen at Maris Andersen's in Santa Barbara years ago, and they had the brightest red color I had seen on a Clivia up to that time.

Preliminary Conclusions from 2009

First, it is now obvious to me that I made far too few crosses among my more interesting Clivia last February and March. One cross that yielded plenty of healthy-looking seeds has produced no germinations so far. I'll have to examine the fertilities of the two parental clones involved very carefully this year, if either of them flowers.

Second, there is some infertility between different clones both within lines (i.e., within Conway plants, within Solomone plants) as well as between lines. 'Cameron Peach' (or at least the clone I have, my #2201) may be a better mother than father. Unfortunately, while I have stored pollen of 'Cameron Peach' from last year, the plant itself is apparently not going to bloom this year. Regardless, I want to test its pollen on other plants that may bloom this spring.

Third, even 3 months may not be long enough to see all the possible germination of clivia seeds. Patience, patience, patience. Easier said than done.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 4:00 PM EST - Feeding Plants

Fertilizers and Bulbs

I'm sure I have covered this previously in this blog, but I failed to index it then and I can't find it now. So, for the record, I am going to discuss my approach to feeding my bulbs.

For all practical purposes, plants can only absorb inorganic compounds from their environments. Adding organic composts will require that these materials be completely digested by microorganisms in the soil before the nutrients in them become available to the plants. In growing plants in pots, it is hard to keep a good balance of beneficial soil microorganisms growing. Rather, you are more likely to be encouraging growth of disease-causing microorgnaisms by adding organic composts to plants in pots.

There are two overall groups of required nutrients for plants, the so-called macronutrients and the micronutrients. Both are equally important; only the quantities needed are different.

Macronutrients

The three components of most commercial fertilizers are macronutrients: nitrogen (symbol N); phosphorus (symbol P), almost always as phosphate; and potassium (symbol K) sometimes erroneously referred to as "potash." In fertilizers the contents of these three nutrients are expressed as the N - P - K values. A value of 20-10-15 would indicate the fertilizer contained 20% by weight of elemental nitrogen in any of several forms. It would contain 10% of phosphorus, expressed as P₂O₅ and therefore somewhat less of the element P than indicated. It would contain 15% potassium, expressed as K₂O, so again slightly less K than the label shows. I've no idea why, in the 21st century, the US government uses such archaic labeling.

Other macronutrients needed by plants in substantial amounts include calcium (symbol Ca), commonly found in limestone as calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), a highly insoluble and therefore very gentle alkaline substance used for neutralizing acidic soils. Sulfur (symbol S) is the final macronutrient. It is found in nature as elemental sulfur, but is usually supplied to plants as sulfate (SO₄). Sulfate is the form in which plants absorb and metabolize sulfur.

Micronutrients

Micronutrients are just as essential to plants as the macronutrients, but are needed in much smaller amounts. They are the elements boron (B), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), and zinc (Zn). Because they are needed in such small amounts, they are also referred to as the "trace elements."

Forms of Nitrogen

Nitrogen in fertilizers is found in two chemical forms: as ammonia (NH₃) and derivatives of ammonia; and as nitrate (NO₃). The best form for plants is nitrate, since plants can absorb and metabolize nitrate directly. Ammonium compounds are much less easily absorbed by plants. In fact, ammonium compounds are most readily metabolized by bacteria and fungi in the soil.

Continuous Liquid Feeding

I recommend feeding your plants with a dilute solution of soluble plant food every time you water them. We use 100 p.p.m. of nitrogen from a soluble plant food, 20-10-20 with micronutrients. To get about 100 p.p.m., add about 1/3 of a level teaspoonful of the crystals per U.S. gallon of water. If you speak Metric, we want 100 mg. of nitrogen per liter of water; since the N is 20%, that is 500 mg (0.5 gram) of solid fertilizer crystals per liter.

Bulbs analyze for 16% nitrogen, a little less than that for potassium, and less still for phosphorus. There is usually no reason to increase the ratio of any one of them versus the other two. I suggest using a completely soluble fertilizer, with as much of the N as nitrate as possible, and N-P-K of about 20-5-15.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Monday, February 15, 2010, 4:00 PM EST - Hippeastrum

Hippeastrum Starting to Bloom

Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii] #1455.A

The hybrid [papilio x mandonii] came from one of my bulbs of papilio in bloom in March, 2002. I had stored pollen from mandonii when it had blooms some months before, and used that to pollinate the papilio. The seeds took two months to ripen; then I floated them on water till they were nice seedlings with a leaf at least an inch long. They were planted in a community pot. After a few years, they were repotted into individual 1-gal. pots. All the seedlings from that batch have my serial number 1455. Several of them have bloomed or are getting ready to bloom. That makes 8 years from pollination to first flowers.

Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii] #1455.B

One of my papilio bulbs has a scape starting.

Hippeastrum petiolatum are also in bloom. These grow quickly; and once they start to bloom, this strain at least produces two scape every year.

Hippeastrum petiolatum

These flowers are 70 mm, less than three inches, across. There are 4 or 5 flowers per umbel, at least this time. Both bulbs have a second scape starting as the first scapes are in full bloom.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Sunday, February 14, 2010, 10:30 AM EST - Winter Pastime

Birds at the Feeders

With so much snow on the ground, and since Smokey, our last outdoors cat, passed away last summer, we decided it was time to put up some bird feeders again after at least a twenty-year absence. We put up a finch feeder, a small general seed feeder, and one for suet. The suet lasted about two weeks, the finch feeder holds enough for several days, but the general feeder could be refilled several times a day if we felt like it.

The most obvious visitors are the Starlings, immigrants from Europe. They come in gangs and the bully the other birds and each other as well. I'd just as soon see them go hungry, but that's only my personal sentiment towardsStarlings. I'm sure they would disagree with that. Still, if they were rare, we would be admiting their intricately speckeled black coat of feathers. As it is, we resent them rather than admire them.

A few English Sparrows also show up, which are not sparrows actually. I think they are better described as "house finches." They don't constitute a threat to the other birds, as far as I have noticed.

The native birds include an abundance of Goldfinches in their drab winter uniforms. The so-called "Purple Finch" is also common, but the color on its head and chest (in the males anyway) is orange, not purple. We also have numerous Juncos visiting the feeders. We also have visits from several types of native sparrows, none of which I can identify so far. There was a time, maybe sixty years ago, when I could identify all the common native bird species here in Indiana.

Two Cardinals, a male and a female, also hang around our place and come to the feeder from time to time.

One lone Bluejay occasionally shows up around the feeder, but it is shy and generally is pushed away by the starlings. Bluejays are in the crow family, which has been hit very hard in North America by the West Nile Virus. When I was a kid, Bluejays were common and tended to be the bullies that Starlings are today. Things have changed.

An occasional Chickadee also flits by, but they seem to be extremely shy and next stay at the feeder when we are around.

I've tried to take pictures of some of these birds at the feeders, but my expensive little Canon point-and-shoot digital never gets the focus on the birds themselves. My expensive Nikon D-70 SLR is having age problems, and I may need to get a new camera body to replace it. At least the Nikon's lenses should work with the next Nikon camera body I buy as a replacement.

If this snowy winter weather persists much longer, I'm going to have to dig out some of my old bird books and see who some of our feathered visitors really are.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, February 6, 2010, 6:00 PM EST - Clivia in Bud

First, the Weather!

We probably got 6 to 7 inches of snow yesterday and last night, but it's very hard to be sure. The winds have blown many open areas almost clear, down to only 1 or 2 inches deep. Around buildings and beyond groups of trees, the drifts are nearly a foot deep.

We always get drifts across the drive just in front of the garage door. I hope our driveway will be plowed by tonight, because I like to go out for breakfast on Sunday mornings.

They tell us that another snowstorm is coming Monday evening. Oh, joy!

Clivia Getting Ready to Bloom

One Clivia robusta from Kranskop in South Africa is in bloom. I think this is slightly late for robusta to be blooming; but then I have two Clivia caulescens that are just finishing flowering, and this very early for caulescens to be in bloom.

In the Clivia House on Thursday, I saw that there are buds appearing on some of the other Clivia plants. Many of the 'Victorian Peach' plants have buds starting to show down in the necks of the plants.

Several yellow clivia are also in bud. These are older, larger plants. There is a first-ever bud showing on one of the Pen Henry White seedlings. I'm eagerly awaiting that flower!

Then there is the oldest Clivia I have, my Belgian #303.A, from somewhere around 1990. No. 303.A has buds showing down in the hearts of two fans. The number 303's are larger and redder than the most recent Belgian hybrids I have seen.

Hippeastrum, too

Finally, two pots of Hippeastrum [papilio x mandonii] are in bloom! I need to take pictures of those, since this is the first time they have flowered. There are buds on the H. petiolatum as well. Let's see what else blooms this spring.

A bigger surprise hasa been that my old Hippeastrum aulicum stenopetalum has set seeds. I've had one plant (numerous bulbs) of H. aulicum stenopetalum for about 30 years. I got it from the late Dr. Tom Whitaker, who got it from the front yard of a lady somewhere in Brazil. It blooms for me from time to time, depending probably on whether I give it any particular care or not. Before I got it, Tom had grown it in his own front yard in La Jolla, Calif., for many years.

It bloomed in the big greenhouse in December, and I took note of the bloom but otherwise left it alone. In 30 years, it has never set any seed, no matter how assiduously I pollinated it. This year, both flowers in the umbel set seed pods. I assume they are "x self," but it is possible that a plant of H. mandonii bloomed at about the same time. In any case, I definitely did not pollinate it myself. Let me stress that it has never, ever, set a seed before while in my possession, whether hand-pollinated or not. Rather curious.

Hippeastrum aulicum stenopetalum

Both seed pods had healthy-looking seed in them, and I planted most of the seeds yesterday. I want to see 1) whether they germinate or not; and 2) eventually, if they someday bloom, whether they are true to their maternal genes or are they hybrids. Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 8:00 AM EST - Midwest Clivia Group

Clivia Get-together

I have set the date for the meeting of the Midwest Clivia Group for March 13-14th, 2010. It will again be at my place. We will plan to have a cold buffet lunch at 12 noon on Saturday, followed by visits in the greenhouses.

In hope that we will get the plants to bloom by then, this morning I turned up the thermostats in the Clivia greenhouse from 45 F nights/50 F days to 60 F nights/ 65 F days.

If you are coming, please bring along any plants you want to show us, and anything you want to trade. Let's make it a swap meet as well as looking at flowers and talking with friends.

Sunday is also available for greenhouse visits. Other Clivia Enthusiasts in the area include Rashid Qureshi in St Louis, Missouri (5 hrs west of here by car) and Kevin Akin outside Columbus, Ohio (2 hrs east by car). Both have greenhouses full of clivias.

If you intend to come in time for lunch on Saturday, March 13th, please R.S.V.P. to me: <jim@shieldsgardens.com>

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, January 23, 2010, 8:30 AM EST - Can You Grow Bulbs in Clay?

Galanthus

Here in central Indiana, we have lots of clay soil. I have tried to naturalize Galanthus in the lawn. Mowing is what eventually eliminated them, but I think not the clay soil. When planted in beds -- i.e., anywhere without grass -- they do well. I grow GG. nivalis, elwesii, and a few woronowii. They do just fine, away from grass and lawnmowers.

Note however that many species of Galanthus are simply not hardy in our climate, regardless of the soil. I've stopped experimenting with Galanthus and Cyclamen, since they are difficult to come by, and I got tired of killing them. Still, GG. elwesii and nivalis do really great here.

Lycoris, Cochicum, Sternbergia

So do Lycoris in addition to squamigera: chinensis, caldwellii, longituba, and sprengeri.

Hardy Cochicum like byzantinum, cilicicum, speciosum, and a few others are terrific here, even in the grass (if you don't mow till their leaves yellow off). My neighbors love the pink flowers in our lawn in later summer! They never complain about the "hay field" effect the unmowed patches of lawn give into early July.

Others that may seem unlikely but that do well include Galtonia, Sternbergia, most Eurasian Gladiolus, and a few hardier Crinum in protected spots (but full sun). You can't have too many Sternbergia! They bloom after the Colchicum have finished flowering.

The Lasagna Method

That said, it is not a good idea to just stick everything into plain clay soil. Add gypsum. Add sand. Add lots of composted leaves, or just pile your leaves on top of the beds when you rake them in autumn.

I make beds on top of the clay, starting with a very thick layer of rotted leaves; then put on a 2 to 4 inch layer of some decent topsoil; and finally cover with 2 inches of plain brown sand. Plant in the sand/topsoil layer (they get mixed when you try to plant anything). The roots will go down to the rotted leaves layer all on their own. I call it the "Lasagna Method."

No spading, but a bit of hauling and spreading. Outstanding drainage! But the clay is close enough that the roots can go down into it, if they need to, to find water in dry weather.

I didn't invent the lasagna method; I got the idea from one of these on-line plant groups. Try it; you'll love it.

Can You Grow Bulbs in Clay?

So, can you grow bulbs in clay? In many case the answer is yes, but you really don't have to. Use the "Lasagna Method" instead.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 6:30 PM EST - Repotting in Winter

Scadoxus puniceus

The Scadoxus puniceus are getting ready to bloom. One spike is all the way up, and most of the rest of bloom size have scapes starting to push up out of the bulbs. Before the flowers start to fade, this year's flush of leaves will be up. That means that this is the last possible moment for repotting this species. Seven years ago, the last time some of these were repotted, the larger bulbs were 8 to 11 cm. in circumference. Now, one I measured is 21.5 cm. around; and it is probably slightly under average size. Seven years ago, most were not yet blooming -- several bloomed the first time in February 2005. (Diameter for 11-cm circumference is about 3.5 cm, or 1.40 inches.)

A bloom-size puniceus with all its roots easily fills a 2-gallon (actually 8.3 Liters) container. They might grow even bigger, but I refuse to put any of them into larger pots than the 2-gallon size. If I hand pollinated these things when they are in bloom in February, we'd flood the world with Scadoxus puniceus seeds. Given the minimal conditions, even in the cold Northern Hemisphere, these are formidable greenhouse plants. They bloom when little else is flowering. They are sizeable. They propagate easily but slowly from seed. They seem to ahve taken 7 years from seed to flower for me. You could probably keep the seedlings growing continuously for their first two years of life in a greenhouse or under lights, and that ought to shorten the time to first flowering.

The ideal time to repot any plant that goes through a dormant phase is just as growth is starting up again at the end of dormancy. When the plant is going into its spurt of new growth, it is very resistant to stresses such as unpotting and replanting. That is when the hormones are all primed to push growth. Sometimes the plants seem to barely notice that they were disturbed.

Facebook Threat

Frank, my IT guy, informed me today that there are viruses in Facebook that will override any anti-virus protection software you can get. It's best if you do NOT ever download any pictures, programs, or anything else from Facebook. Be Warned!

On that happy thought, I bid you, one and all,

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Saturday, January 16, 2010, 12:30 PM EST - Avoiding Chores

Not Entering Inventory Data

My favorite organizer, after my daughter, is Steph. She works here part-time in the summer in the gardens and greenhouses. Steph is a jewel! She likes to clean, so the garden office is usually clean and neat when she is working. Having a few days free over the Christmas break from college (Purdue University), she inventoried Greenhouse 4 for me, sorting all those pots by name and number and writing it all down.

Now Steph is back at Purdue, and I should be putting all that data into a spreadsheet. Maybe next week......, because I'm not sure I really want to know how many pots of Clivia and of Hippeastrum I have back there.

Not Writing My Investigator Annual Report

This is for my Trillium Speciation research project at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The main focus of my project is the relationship between two species, Trillium erectum album and T. simile. I spent a week there in April gathering a little data. (The weather was alternating between pouring rain and plain old snow; nasty for outdoors work.) Now I have to write up my year-end report to keep the National Park Service research permit alive.

I'm not as far behind on this. I actually put the raw data into a spreadsheet last summer, so the arithmetic is already done. But I do need to think about the data, and summarize my thoughts in the report. Maybe tomorrow....

The Glossary of Plant Biology

I have declared it to be out of beta testing status now, and renumbered it to Version 1.0.0, and I will continue to add terms to it as I run across them. I suppose I may never decide that the Glossary is finished; after all, new technical terms are being invented almost daily in science. Actually, the current version number is now 1.0.1, for the moment.

At least now the urgency to build the glossary has receded, and I can think about other things in between occasionally adding a new word or two to it. If you have a term from plant science that isn't in the Glossary and you think it should be, drop me an e-mail with the word and why you want it included or what you think it means. You can find it at: Glossary of Plant Biology.

Haemanthus avasmontanus Rediscovered?

Tim Harvey mentioned in the Pacific Bulb Society list that someone in Windhoek, Namibia, had recently found living plants of the extremely rare Haemanthus avasmontanus. I guess the rediscovered colony must be in Namibia.

According to Dee Snijman in her book, The Genus Haemanthus (National Botanic Gardens of South africa, 1984), the species was known from only a couple of specimens, collected in the Auasberge, southeast of Windhoek, in central Namibia. The flowers are white, the spathe valves (bracts surrounding the umbel) are brownish white. It is presumed to be related to Haemanthus montanus, but the present-day range of H. montanus is eastern South Africa, including the Eastern Cape Province, portions of the Free State, and into Mpumalanga (the old Transvaal region). Snijman says that avasmontanus is the closest relative of montanus.

An alternative spelling of the specific name is avasimontanus, but Snijman does not use this version. Sadly, Dee's book has been out of print for some time now.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Thursday, January 7, 2010, 4:30 PM EST - Making a Transition from Semantics to Evolution

Epigeal and Hypogeal - Evolutionary Implications of Germination Patterns

Exploring vocabulary runs the risk of getting us back into biology. That is the case in the examination of the meaning of the pairs of terms epigeal/hypogeal and skotomorphogenic/photomorphogenic applied to germination. Why are there two such modes of germination? What are their relative advantages and disadvantages to the plant species?

The parent of an epigeal seedling - in this context, one whose cotyledon(s) are above ground, green, and capable of photosynthesis - invests less in making that seed than the parent of a hypogeal seedling. In this context, that means one that has cotyledons or an endosperm loaded with stored energy reserves in the form of fat, protein, or carbohydrate, all provided by the parent plant at fruiting.

In a suitable environment, the parent of epigeal seeds can make more seeds for a given cost in energy than if it were making hypogeal seeds. Here, "epigeal seed" just means a seed that germinates in an epigeal pattern. The more seeds produced, the better the survival and dispersal potentials. This ought, prima facie, to be the better evolutionary strategy.

Why would a species then make seeds that need lots more endosperm or other forms of stored energy? To give the offspring a better chance at survival. They can be born into a harsh environment and carry reserves with them to better their chances of surviving in spite of the environment.

"Evolution cannot be reversed" is a common saying in biology. Environments change, competing species appear or disappear over time, climate changes. Some modern plants may be trapped in less favorable physiological patterns because an ancestor was forced to adopt this pattern to survive. The ancestor, in adopting the pattern, lost the potential to return to using a different pattern. Some plants using hypogeal germination might be better off if they could revert to epigeal germination, but have lost the genetic capability to do so; and vice versa.

Some plants may be in the process of adapting their inherited mode of germination to newer changed circumstances; and some plant species may be able to facultatively adapt their mode of germination, depending upon local circumstances. I don't know, but I do wonder...

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Tuesday, January 5, 2010, 9:30 AM EST - Creating a Glossary. 2.

Adventures with Epigeal and Hypogeal

In essence, epigeal and hypogeal are just arcane words for "above ground" and "below ground," respectively. I am only concerned here with their application to plant biology.

These terms are defined for dicots as follows: Epigeal - describes the germination process where the germinating seed raises the cotyledons above the ground where they function as true leaves. Hypogeal - describes the germination process where the cotyledons remain below ground and do not function as leaves.

All well and good. However, one is easily distracted from the biology by the use of terms referring to where rather than how.

Physiologically, this means the epigeal cotyledons power the growing seedlings by photosynthesizing. The hypogeal cotyledons support the growing seedlings by providing nutrition from stored reserved, in the way that the endosperm does; or else the hypogeal cotyledons may contribute little or nothing to the growth of the seedling, if there is some other source of stored reserve. I would expect seeds having little endosperm to germinate in an epigeal pattern. Seeds with generous reserves in the endosperm or cotyledons would not be constrained to rapidly produce a green leaf, so have the option through evolution of first building a sturdy protected plant underground.

It gets a bit murky when we try to apply these terms to monocots. Many monocot plant families have a cotyledon that never emerges from the seed, following the pattern defined for dicots as "hypogeal germination."

Some monocots produce a green shoot very soon after germination, during the first growth season. Edward McRae in his book "Lilies" defines epigeal germination in lilies (genus Lilium) in this way.

McRae defines "hypogeal germination" as that where the seed produces an underground bulb during the first season of growth but no leaf. Only after a period of dormancy, therefore in the second season of growth, does the plant produce a green leaf above ground.

McRae was writing for the average gardener. Lily experts further recognize immediate epigeal, delayed epigeal, immediate hypogeal, and delayed hypogeal germinations in different Lilium species and cultivars.

We can see the rough parallels between the dicot uses of the terms and the application of the terms to lilies. The absence of cotyledons in these lilies can cause pedants a great deal of trouble in using either of them to describe what lily seedlings do. Applying them to other monocots becomes equally problematic. Of such dilemmas are the trials of glossarists apparently made!

Incidentally, in trying to find out what these terms mean, I was told that they apply to ant foraging habits as well: Epigeal foraging in ants is above ground, hypogeal foraging is underground. I never knew that before!

I think we should ban the use of both epigeal and hypogeal from discussions of any and all monocots. Find other terms for describing germination processes in monocots. The Liliists (is that a word?) would probably revolt, if we tried.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Look up technical terms in the Glossary of Plant Biology

Monday, December 28, 2009, 7:30 PM EST - Creating a Glossary

The Glossary of Plant Biology

The Glossary of Plant Biology is on my web site at: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/info/Glossary.html if you are curious about what I've been doing for the past few days.

It has been great fun! Since I intend it to be an adjunct to this blog, with easy access via links to definitions of technical terms I may use, I can point out the weaknesses in some of the technical concepts we use. I did finally include a vague definition of "species," against my better judgement. A rigorous definition of species has proven elusive to biologists over the last century or so.

I started life collecting bugs. My notion of "dorsal" is the zoological definition of the word: the surface of the animal away from the ground. I discovered, much to my surprise, that this definition just does not work in botany, so it's a good idea NOT to use the terms "dorsal" and "ventral" in relation to plants. At least not around me, please.

I am also discovering that there are some great on-line sources for definitions. For technical terms, I recommend Wordnetweb at Princeton University. Based at a great university, this is my source of preference among those I have seen so far in developing my Glossary. Highly recommended.

Wikipedia is also very comprehensive and very good -- so far as I can tell. I have read that the Wikipedia group are losing volunteer monitors to tend various sections, and vandals are hacking pages in some cases. I suppose we should use Wikipedia with great care and not for anything where accuracy is critical.

Dave's Garden web site has a couple lists of definitions. There are lots and lots of words defined! Most definitions seem pretty good to me, but I only looked at a few. So far as I know, anyone can post a definition there, and no one vets them critically -- again, so far as I know. Probably somewhat less rigorous than most Wikipedia entries, at a guess.

As a working biologist for about 70 years (if you count the bugs I caught as a little kid on the farm), I found I had a pretty good feel for most of the words I thought of to include in the Glossary. This is logical: I think of words that I have already used or have read in books and articles. So I ought to be able to put together a usable definition if not necessarily one that a specialist in the field would write. I want my definitions to be useful to persons who do not have an advanced degree in biology. Understandable is more important than rigor in my Glossary.

I'm still working away on it. Meantime, if you poke around through it out of curiosity, let me know if you spot any glaring errors. I'm not going to get up-tight about nuances, but I don't want to mis-state the general meanings of terms. Let me know: <jim@shieldsgardens.com>.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 9:30 AM EST - Miscellany

Local Weather Report

So far we have missed the bullet on the big winter storm in the central USA. They had predicted freezing rain for last night and this morning, but it came down just as rain. The freeze edge moved just to the north and east of us, so some other poor unfortunates are getting "our" ice storm. That's OK with me, given the alternative.

Glossary of Plant Biology

I have been somewhat bored the past few days, being reluctant to go out in the rain and snow and cold wind. So to entertain myself, and because I need an easy reference to which to link my comments when I use technical terms, I set to work. So far I have somewhere over 90 terms defined, almost all the definitions coming off the top of my head. So it is meant to help the non-scientist reader get a quick idea of what a technical term means, but not to serve as a textbook for serious students.

You can find it, the Glossary of Plant Biology, at this link: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/info/Glossary.html but I will normally provide a direct link into the Glossary whenever I use a term defined in it. For example, try meiosis. If this does not work in your browser, please let me know.

I will eventually start to borrow proper definitions from other sources, but for now it has been fun just to see how many technical terms I could come up with and generate reasonable definitions for.

If you spot errors, by all means contact me and point them out to me. Use my blog e-mail, <blog@shieldsgardens.com>

The Matter of "Species"

I purposely omitted a definition for "species" from the Glossary. In practical terms, a "species" is whatever a biologist says it is. Another way of saying that a biologist knows a species when he sees one.

The problem arises when someone tries to put into a few words a definition of "species" that holds up for all cases of what most biologists have called "species" in the past. One man's species is someone else's group of several species. Does there have to be gene flow through all populations of a species for there to be just one species?

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 5:00 PM EST - Peach Clivia. 2.

Pink in Relation to Peach

Following up on my discussion of peach clivias, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that pink clivias are just peaches with the underlying yellow pigmentation suppressed.

Clones and Strains

I cannot claim complete coverage here, because I am sure there are many pink clivias in South Africa that I have never seen, and probably some in Southern California as well. The pinks I am most familiar with are those from Solomone. They have pinks, Watercolor Washed Pinks, and Charm Pinks. All have very light pigmentation in the petals and sepals, but none I have seen are absolutely devoid of all yellow color. They may need to be classified as pale peaches.

Solomone Pink No. 2010 (left) and Solomone Pink No. 2011 (right)

Solomone Watercolor Pink No. 2004 (left) and Solomone Watercolor Pink No. 2005 (right)

Whether these Solomone "pinks" are pink or are peach seems to depend very much on the lighting in determining whether you or I can see very much yellow underneath the pink. How much patterning shows up in the Watercolor lines seems to depend on the year and therefore on the growing conditions. I see less contrasting pattern on the plants here in Indian than I thought I saw on them in the Solomone greenhouse near Watsonville, California. In any case, they are remarkable flowers and worth some work breeding new generations of their like.

Besides the Solomone pinks, there is the South African 'Wittig Pink'. A true-breeding pink strain has been developed from it by Sean Chubb as 'Pretty Pink'. I've never seen a 'Wittig Pink' but I do have a couple of Sean's 'Pretty Pink' plants. They are still too small to bloom by at least a couple years, so I will have to wait patiently to see where these plants are headed. It seems likely that the 'Wittig Pink' is in the same genetic class as the 'Appleblossom' strain, which latter is characterized by light rose to pink coloration in a pattern so that only edges or tips of the tepals are colored. Some plants of this strain lack the yellow ground color.

With my three plants of Sean's 'Pretty Pink' and a couple seedlings from the 'Appleblossom' group, I will eventually be able to undertake my own breeding experiments in this classification.

Are there any "true" pinks in the clivias? For that matter, what is a "true" pink? I think we need to define a pink flower as one that has no yellow pigments visible under the dilute red anthocyanin pigments in the surface layer of cells. I have not yet seen a real pink clivia so far. When I do see one, I think it will have come from breeding in the 'Appleblossom' strain. Keep watching for the 'Appleblossom' clivias.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Monday, December 21, 2009, 5:00 PM EST - Peach Clivia. 1 Modified.

Update of Yesterday's Blog

I have added a link to a page on peach clivias in the Shields Gardens' Info section to yesterday's discussion: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/info/PeachClivia.html.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Sunday, December 20, 2009, 5:00 PM EST - Peach Clivia. 1.

Clones and Cultivars

Keith Hammett and associates demonstrated a few years ago that peach clivia flowers have both yellow carotenoid pigments and much lower levels of the red anthocyanin pigments. The characteristic appearance of a peach flowered clivia is due to the presence of both the yellow pigment and the red pigment. There is no separate and distinct "peach" pigment, at least not in Clivia.

The classic peach clivias were David Conway's 'Tessa' and 'Ellexa'. The precise origins of Dave Conway's cultivars are obscure. He found many as unusual stand-outs in the stock of other nurserymen in Southern California. He raised many from seed, often using his mixed pollen method, where he simply combined pollen from all the plants he wanted to breed with, and then applied that mix to every flower on every plant. We may never know where any particular Conway cultivar came from.

Conway's 'Tessa' is a medium sized to small plant with mostly erect leaves. The color of the flowers seems to be a deeper shade of yellow-peach. 'Ellexa' is a larger plant, with taller scape and longer leaves. The leaves arch over so that the tips may hang below the horizontal. 'Ellexa' has flowers of a somewhat lighter shade than those of 'Tessa'.
Conway's 'Tessa'
Image of 'Tessa' copyright by Shields
Gardens Ltd. All rights reserved.

In Southern California, the most widely distributed strains of peach clivias were the 'Victorian Peach' line developed at the former Sunlet Nursery near San Diego. These plants were probably developed using some of Conway's peaches as well as other available breeding material. A true breeding line or lines eventually resulted. The results varied, with there being a very pale peach strain, as well as a dark peach atrain, and a group of intermediate shade plants. With the closing of Sunlet Nursery, I think quite a bit of the Victorian Peach stock was obtained by Victor Murillo.

'Victorian Peach' Dark Strain
Image copyright by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

A famous South African peach line produced the 'Cameron Peach' strain and the 'Tipperary Peach' strain. These two lines of plants had a common origin at one nursery, and were arbitrarily split into two groups when that nursery was dissolved. They are apparently not widely available outside South Africa.

'Cameron Peach'
Image copyright by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

It is generally thought in Clivia circles that all the above peach plants originated from isolated sports in the Belgian hybrid strain. Whether they are all genetically the same peach or not remains to be clarified by Clivia breeders around the world. For some additional discussion, see Shields Gardens' Info section on Peach Clivia.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 11:00 AM EST - Red Clivia. 2.

Clones and Cultivars

The classic red clivia was Conway's 'Doris', and many of us bought it. Just as good a red, perhaps a better one, is Conway's 'Abigail'.
Conway's 'Doris'

Other reds that we have had include the regular Solomone Red strain, and Solomone's selected "Reddest" strain.
Solomone Red Clivia

We look for reds wherever we can find them. A nice red turned up in a batch of pastels received from Kevin Akins; I call that one "Kevin's Red."

Years ago, Pen Henry sent me a batch of seeds from her breeding program. A few of those resulted in plants that are now blooming size, labeled "Pen Henry Reds." I am sure Pen's red is a complex interspecific hybrid, since the berries are yellow with only a little pink coloration. I think her reds derive from her 'Tropical Splendor' strain of interspecific hybrids. I'll talk about berry colors some other time.
Pen Henry Red Clivia

Other Conway plants with notable red coloration in the flowers include 'Sabrina Delphine', 'Fleur de Lis', and 'Jean Delphine'. In my greenhouse, some of these have not done well: 'Abigail', 'Doris', 'Fleur de Lis', 'Jean Delphine', 'Sabrina Delphine', and the Solomone "Reddest." I suspect that the Solomone red lines have a lot of 'Doris' genes in their backgrounds. I have one plant of my cross ['Sabrina Delphine' x 'Doris'] that has suvived to just about bloom size. I am eagerly waiting to see what its flowers look like.
Clivia 'Jean Delphine'

Many red clivia have tulip shaped flowers. This seems to be genetically linked with the genes for intense red color. On the other hand, some of the South African reds and the Belgian reds tend to have more open, flaring flower form. Some of my [Miné X Bing Wiese Green Throat] from South Africa have good flower form, decent red color, a white ground color and throat, and a rich green heart. At least sometimes.

The Best Reds in California

While Conway's 'Doris' and his 'Abigail' bloom quite a nice red color in southern California, there are redder reds on clivias there. Plants from the cross ['Abigail' x 'Doris'] made by Maris Andersons in Santa Barbara have excellent deep red flowers in a nice umbel. Jim Comstock has produced a few of the very reddest reds I have ever seen. I do not know the names of any of the Comstock red clones, and Comstock's breeding materials are not available to anyone so far as I have ever heard.

I repeated the ['Abigail' x 'Doris'] cross myself here in Indiana, and we have about 6 surviving plants from that batch. At least two of them are actually large enough to flower this year, if they happen to feel like it.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Sunday, December 13, 2009, 11:00 AM EST - Red Clivia. 1.

Breeding for Reds

Light has a very strong influence on color development in Clivia flowers, and in other flowers as well. We perhaps need to explain to newcomers and remind our experienced colleagues that anthocyanin color expression is controlled by incident light. If the genes allow anthocyanin pigments, will the light induce their expression?

You can buy a rich red flowered Clivia in Southern California and grow it in Indiana, and see with your own eyes (my own eyes in this case) that here in the cloudy, nearly-sunless Midwestern winters, your red clivia blooms red-orange or even just plain old orange. It's enough to disillusion a strong believer!

There are good biochemical reasons for this, which need not concern the non-biochemists among us. Just remember that in Northern latitudes and in regions with significantly reduced direct sunlight in winter and spring, red colors do not develop fully in most Clivia plants.

A noble breeding goal for someone growing Clivia in the Northeastern USA , eastern Canada, or northern Europe would be to select for deep red color in your Clivias where you are and breed with them. If I were 20 or 30 years younger, I'd work hard on this myself.

I might mention that some of the newer Belgian hybrids bloom more pastel than red-orange here in Indiana. You might still want to incorporate some Belgians into your breeding program, so that you can get to first flowering in under 36 months. I have one [Belgian x Belgian] that went from planting the seed to first flowers in ca. 30 months here in Indiana. If you add in ca. 10 months from pollination to seed harvest, you can go from pollination to first flower in about 40 months, or just over 3 years, even here in northern climates like Indiana's.

If I had a growing greenhouse separate from my blooming greenhouse, I could keep the temperatures warm all winter and supplement the lighting with high intensity metal halide lights to hasten growth even more. Of course, that would be more expensive.

I'll let you know if any of my various past attempts to breed for better reds ever yield any plants that actually have red flowers here in Indiana.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Saturday, December 12, 2009, 5:00 PM EST - Winter Weather.

Weather

We did not get the snow that much of the Midwest got last week, nor the heavy rains that others got. We did get about ½ inch of snow in the Indianapolis area, and as the first snow of the season, it caused havoc on the streets at the first morning rush hour. We and ours did not participate in the havoc, fortunately.

It has also been a bit cold around here. The lowest temperature I've recorded from my maximum-minimum thermometers so far this season has been +9°F (or about -13°C). It's likely to get colder here than that before the next two months are finished.

Today is mild, about 35°F so far, with the sun shining. I worked in shirtsleeves back in the big greenhouse for a while before lunch, but tonight or tomorrow we may get rain or freezing rain. It's still winter, after all!

Light Snow and a Dark December Morning

After the first light snow of the season, things do not have the romantic look of a Midwest winter with heavy snow on the ground and the tree branches. It just looks dingy with a measly half inch of snow on the ground. (My spell checker informed me that it was not spelled "measely." So why have I always pronounced it with three syllables?)

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Sunday, December 6, 2009, 3:00 PM EST - Flowers for the Holidays. 2.

Clivia for Christmas

Most Clivia will not be blooming until late February or early March. The Belgian hybrids we grow come from ID'Flor in Lochristi, Belgium; and some of them, but not all, bloom early in the season. We have a few in bloom right now.

Clivia miniata, Belgian Strain

I'm not in Europe to check, but I suspect that there a plenty of Clivia plants in bud or in bloom in florists' shops and supermarkets there right now. Most Europeans who buy blooming clivias treat them as annuals and discard them when the flowers fade. They really should treat them as perennials. I can't believe that people over there have not been specifically breeding clivias to bloom in time for the holidays. I'm surprised no one in the U.S.A. has tried this. But then it's the sad fact that most Americans, even flower lovers, don't realize the beauty of Clivia plants.

Various other Belgian hybrids from ID'Flor, not necessarily blooming right now.

The newest Belgian hybrids are medium sized, bred to be compact enough for a windowsill or a small table. The leaves are medium width, neither so narrow as the wild types nor so broad as the fancy Japanese and Chinese hybrids. Belgian plants from 15 years ago were larger and the leaves were narrower. The flowers were all the same color, a bright red-orange. The Belgian growers now breed for pastels, yellows, and peaches.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Sunday, November 29, 2009, 1:00 PM EST - Christmas Flowers for the Holidays

Christmas Flowers

As far away as Europe, the Christmas season brings "Amaryllis" (Hippeastrum hybrids) and Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) into the stores and homes. Regardless of what eslse is blooming, these seem to be the most popular flowers for the holidays.

Poinsettias

The traditional flowering houseplants for the Christmas holiday season are poinsettias, Euphorbia pulcherrima, native shrubs of Mexico in the family Euphorbiaceae. Whereas you once had your choice of red or red, you can now choose from colors from red to pink to white to even blue or green (these last thanks to food dyes). Although perennial in mild climates, these are best treated as throw-away annuals in colder zones. Remember, the "petals" are leaves or bracts that develop striking colors to attract pollinators to the small, almost insignificant flowers in the center of the cluster of colorful bracts.

Poinsettias Seen at Kroger and at Habigs

The colors seemed rather conservative so far, with no garish blues and only a subdued orange color seen.

Amaryllis

You should be able to find potted Dutch Amaryllis bulbs in garden centers now. If you force them, you should be able to have them blooming by Christmas. These "Amaryllis" are actually hybrids in the genus Hippeastrum in the family Amaryllidaceae. Although most of their wild South American ancestors are adapted to seasonal growth during a rainy season, these modern hybrids can be manipulated to bloom at various times of the year. Although we often call them "Dutch Amaryllis," they are as likely to come from South Africa or from India as from The Netherlands.

I haven't seen any Hippeastrum in bloom so far this season, but these bulbs in bud at Habig's Garden Shop in Westfield will probably be in full flower in another couple of weeks.

This one grows commonly in gardens around Cape Hatteras. I like the bold colors and the simplicity of the flower.
Hippeastrum hybridum "Cape Hatteras"

Don't throw these bulbs away after they finish blooming! Set them in a warm, sunny place and keep them watered. Feed lightly with a soluble bulb flood. We recommend Peters or Jack's Professional Peat Lite (20-10-20 with micronutrients). In September or October, before frosts start, move the plants to a protected but cool area, decrease watering, and let them rest. After a month or so of resting, repot the bulbs and start watering again. Move to a warm, brightly lit area, and watch for the new bud to appear. The cycle is starting all over again, and you can keep this going for as many years as you care to.

Cyclamen

The giant Florist's Cyclamen are a far cry from their wild ancestors! The commercial plants are derived from Cyclamen persicum, native to Iran and surrounding areas. The flowers on the florists' hybrids are huge compared to those of the wild species. The florists' plants come in plain or frilled forms and in colors from red to pink to white, including some picoteed types (if I recall correctly).

These are also perennials, and should go through the summer indoors, when you should keep them dry and warm. Repot in autumn when you see the first new growth starting. The tubers will probably not divide, but they should just get bigger and bigger with the passing years. Feed the same thing as we recommend for amaryllis and other bulbs.

Other Florists Plants

Paperwhite Narcissus, Hydrangea, Kalanchoe, Christmas cactus, and more things are on offer at various places. More later.....

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Saturday, November 21, 2009, 1:00 PM EST - Seed Dispersal and Red Lists

Seed Dispersal in Trillium

Discussions in the Trillium-L list have convinced its members, including me, that seed of Trillium are principally spread about by ants, yellow jackets, and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Russell Graham in Oregon found this link: Cornell University. So we have scientific evidence that deer are active dispersers of seeds.

It seems likely that other animals that like ripe fruit and berries might also fill the same function, where they still exist with wild Trillium colonies. For instance, black bears surely must like ripe Trillium fruit as much as deer do. I would expect raccoons to similarly enjoy an occasional ripe Trillium fruit for lunch. I know our local raccoons at this time of year leave lots of persimmon seeds in their scat.

George Africa from Vermont sent me these comments and observastions on this topic:

"Deer are frequent here and regularly eat the seed pods from trillium. I have been trying to increase my collection of grandiflorum and it's always a close battle to stay a day ahead of insects and deer. We have a large population of bear here too. Sunday night I was out looking skyward to observe the meteor showers and I heard something behind me. Flashlight came upon two glow-in-the-dark yellow eyes and (s)he wasn't out for meteors. Turkeys were reintroduced in Vermont in the 70s and now they are everywhere. They bed down in the trilliums and eat the pods too. I suspect the bear do but haven't seen them or looked to verify signs."

The question is, in which animals that eat ripe Trillium fruits can the seeds survive and emerge in viable condition? Accoding to John Gyer, there are doubts that the seeds would survive the digestive processes in carnivores, nor the gizzards in birds like wild turkeys and other fowl. So wild turkeys, bears, coyotes, and even raccoons might be precluded as effective seed dispersal agents for Trillium. John does suggest that some kinds of birds might spread trillium seeds. We need to check this out.

The way to demonstrate that a large mammal is a dispersal vector for a plant species is to grow that plant from the droppings of the animal in question. It might be more practical to feed ripe Trillium berries to captive bears and raccoons.

Narcissus cantabricus in Bloom

This tender dwarf Narcissus has survived 8 years in my greenhouse, but rarely bloomed. In August 2008, I finally repotted it. After spending a year recuperating from the transplant (or more likely from 7 years of neglect) if is blooming its head off this year. Repotting helps!
Narcissus cantabricus foliosus

South African Red List

Justin Smith in the Pacific Bulb Society list found this terrific link for anyone intersted in plants of South Africa:

• www.sanbi.org/biodiversity/Red%20List%2003-02-2009.xls

You need Excel or a compatible spreadsheet program to open this file. The parent site for this file is SANBI: Biodiversity Policy and Planning. For a searchable on-line database of names and their status (synonyms, nomina nuda, etc.) use this link:

• http://www.sanbi.org/frames/dbasesfram.htm

Coffee Shops -- A Bit Off-topic

Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on the demise of the coffee shop. The writer claims the late 19th and early 20th century coffee shops in Vienna were the sources of all the new ideas of their times. Now, places like Starbucks are feeble shadows of those classic coffee shops. The silence is broken only by the faint click of people posting to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Where are today's intellectuals? Maybe they all have jobs, unlike most of the folks hanging around coffee shops a hundred years ago.

In Indianapolis, we at least have Martha Hoover's excellent Café Patachou and Petit Chou establishments. They have the best croissants in Indiana! They make wonderful omelettes. Their tomato atrichoke soup is outstanding.

We stopped at Petit Chou at Clay Terrace yesterday afternoon for tea. I had a croissant with ganache cream (fancy chocolate sauce); positively decadent. I'll have to go back before Thanksgiving for another. Now if I can just get them to make croissants filled with almond paste....

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 1:00 PM EST - Planting Spring Bulbs

What to Plant Now

This is late in the season to be planting your spring flowering bulbs, unless you are planting tulips and lilies. In fact, this is generally the ideal time to plant bulbs of Tulipa and Lilium. It is too late to plant Narcissus, which need the warm weather of late summer to develop their root systems.

I grow very few tulips here, since the large hybrids don't last long for me. The problem is heavy clay soil and very wet summers, both of which are less than perfect for tulips in their summer dormancy. Some of the dwarf Tulipa species and hybrids do much better here, and we had them for quite a few years. None of them seem to be permanent here, unfortunately.

Lilium 'Black Beauty'	Lilium henryi

Lilium bulbs should not be stored out of the ground, which is precisely what the Dutch mass producers do. They should be transplanted in late autumn -- right now -- rather than being offered to people in spring and in late summer, as the mass marketers do. Only two Lilium have lasted any length of time here: L. 'Black Beauty' and L. henryi. I think I should plant lots more of these two varieties. (Note: I had 'Black Beauty' mislabeled as 'Black Dragon' in the initial version of this blog.)

Dwarf Narcissus Species

I had an inquiry about how to grow some dwarf Narcissus species. The questioner lives in Pennsylvania, but I answered of course for Indiana; the differences should not be too great, but there are some.

I have Narcissus calcicola growing well in a raised bed "rock garden." N. fernandesii and N. willkommii also grow there and bloomed for several years. N. assoanus only lasted a couple years in the rock garden and then disappeared.

This bed is 12 to 18 inches high, with the top layer being sandy river bottom silt with a limy character; it has lots of shells of dead snails in it. Under the sandy silt, there is a thick layer of pea gravel. Finally, the base layer is #8 river gravel (about 1/2 to 1 inch diameter pebbles). Fritillaria crassifolia kurdica thrives there too, even seeding around modestly. Two species of Brodiaea live in the same bed and come back and bloom every year.

"Calcicola" means loving lime or living in lime. That may be why N. calcicola does so well in this particular bed. It clearly tolerates very cold winter temperatures with the ground frozen to a significant depth. Jane McGary noted that her calcicola do very well in her acid soil in Oregon. The difference in amounts of moisture between Indiana and Oregon may be important in this regard.

In more conventional beds, not elevated, N. bulbicodium conspicuus and N. b. nivalis lived for awhile and even bloomed a couple times. N. asturiensis does as well as any garden hybrid Narcissus in an ordinary bed here.

None of the species named here did well inside my cool greenhouse (lowest temperature T > 32ºF or 0ºC). They did better outdoors, even if they did not survive forever outside. Summer rain may have hurt them, but they seemed to need the freezing temperatures of winter to grow and bloom.

Books on the Web

A member of the Pacific Bulb Society list posted a note about an on-line library of scanned books. This one is particularly appropriate to those interested in plants: the Biodiversity Heritage Library. I downloaded a book on Lepidoptera of India by F. Moore from 1893 (PDF file with over 300 pages). This web site has books going back to the 15th century. Check the site out; you'll probably be fascinated!

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

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Sunday, November 15, 2009, 6:30 PM EST - Weather and Bloom

Weather

November has been very mild so far, with only light frosts overnight and afternoons about 55ºF to 68ºF (ca. 13ºC to 20ºC), about 3 to 15 degrees F (2 to 8ºC) warmer than average for this time of year (autumn). November has also been quite dry, after a very wet October (over 5 inches/125 mm of rainfall, vs. about 2.5 inches/62 mm on average).

Bloom in the Greenhouse

All the tender plants except the Cymbidium orchids are already long since inside the greenhouses for the winter. The plants of Cymbidium are starting to bud out now, so we should have flowers before Christmas. We will move the pots inside the greenhouse before there is a hard frost (temperature lower than 28ºF/-2ºC).

The only outdoor flower still in bloom is Crocus cartwrightianus, which is pushing its last new flowers out of the ground. All else is finished for the season.

Inside the greenhouses, the Lachenalia are starting to bloom, with L. rubida and L. viridiflora both flowering just now. Lachenalia pusilla finished blooming weeks ago, and L. (Polyxena) ensifolia has finished blooming. Massonia echinata is in full bloom, and Massonia pustulata and M. depressa are in bud.

Narcissus cantabricus foliosus is in bloom, after having been repotted in August 2008. A few pots of Nerine bowdenii are still blooming, although most of the bowdenii have finished. Nerine undulata is starting to bloom, and when it finishes, the Nerine will be over with until next summer.

Two large Zantedeschia aethiopica cultivars are starting to bloom; with luck, they will continue off and on for the next few months.

Occasional Clivia are in bloom now (C. robusta, some miniata Belgian hybrids) but their main bloom isn't expected until March.

This is the quietest time of year for us.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 2:00 PM EST - Conservation by Intervention

Human-Assisted Plant Migration

In the face of changing climate, plants are being squeezed out of their traditional habitats by not just human pressure alone. The changing climate is making things too hot for a lot of plants. The following is from the November 11th Sigma Xi - American Scientist daily e-newsletter. My apologies to Sigma Xi for picking up items from them two days in a row, but news about plant conservation is rare and hard to come by; we can't afford to ignore any of it.

---

A Hunt for Seeds to Save Species, Perhaps by Helping Them Move

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

CHICAGO -- Pitcher's thistle, whose fuzzy leaves and creamy pink puffs once thrived in the sand dunes along several of the Great Lakes, was driven by development, drought and weevils into virtual extinction from the shores of Lake Michigan decades ago.

But in the 1990s, seeds collected from different parts of the thistle's range were grown at the Chicago Botanic Garden and planted with the help of the Morton Arboretum along the lake, in Illinois State Beach Park, north of Chicago near the Wisconsin state line. The plants from Indiana's dunes to the south are doing well; the plants that had come from the north are failing.

With those mixed results in mind, scientists from the botanic garden are sending teams out across the Midwest and West to the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin to collect seeds from different populations of 1,500 prairie species by 2010, and from 3,000 species by 2020. The goal is to preserve the species and, depending on changes in climate, perhaps even help species that generally grow near one another to migrate to a new range.

---

Discussion of this item was picked up in the e-mail list of the Pacific Bulb Society, and Paul Licht, director of the U.C. Berkeley Botanical Garden pointed out that this work by the Chicago Botanic Garden is part of a larger program. To quote from Paul's posting:

"The program referred to here is part of the larger 'Seeds of Success' program (http://www.nps.gov/plants/SOS/index.htm) designed to 'save' many plants. Here at Berkeley, we are involved in collected about four dozen native Californian species as part of this program which focuses on more or less common species. In addition, we have been collecting and are now introducing several extremely endangered local species under the sponsorship of the Center for Plant Conservation.(http://www.centerforplantconservation.org/)."

Unquote

The U.C. Botanical Garden has more conservation projects underway.

Boyce Tankersley, Director of Living Plant Documentation at Chicago Botanic Garden, then took up the story:

"The CBG studies with respect to assisted migration are ongoing and the causes of some of the problems associated with Pitchers Thistle were only recently determined.

These kinds of projects are relatively unique because they require very long term investments of staff and financial support. We are very fortunate to have been able to assemble those in one place, at least for the Pitchers Thistle.

The Science staff working on this and other conservation efforts either at the species or ecosystem levels are now located in the new Science Center."

Unquote.

The Center for Plant Conservation is located on the grounds of the Missouri Botanic Garden in St. Louis. I visited the CPC on a trip to St. Louis about a year ago and had the pleasure of hearing the CPC story from the director herself, Dr. Kathryn L. Kennedy. They welcome the support of the plant-loving public! I encourage everyone to look into and support this activity.

It would seem reasonable to start with common species, but of course they are common because they have a high survivability; they are very adaptable. The rare ones are rare because they do not have this capability! They are rare because they cannot adapt to new and changing environments. These are almost the definitions of 'common' vs. 'rare'. So success with rare and endangered species of plants is likely always to be difficult to achieve. Niche species will always be a great challenge to keep alive as the planet changes.

If you plant new seedlings of a rare plant back into the same place where it is going extinct, it is not unreasonable to expect that the seedlings will be affected at least as much as the existing plants by whatever forces are driving the extinction. You would need to find new locations, and make the new spots safer for the plants than the original habitat was.

Change is inevitable and on-going. Remember that everything growing in the Midwest above ca. latitude 40ºN was not there 20,000 years ago. There was just a mile-thick layer of ice. The plants have had 20,000 years to migrate to where they are now. The next migration, unfortunately, may have to be made in 100 years instead -- that is where I can see human intervention being useful and indeed necessary. We can move plants from one mountain that's becoming too warm to another that is higher or farther north, and perhaps they will survive a while longer.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 2:00 PM EST - Odds and Ends

Bar Codes for Species

The following item as taken from the November 9 issue of the the Sigma Xi/American Scientist e-newsletter:

---

Plant Experts Unveil DNA Barcode

from BBC News Online

Hundreds of experts from 50 nations are set to agree on a "DNA barcode" system that gives every plant on Earth a unique genetic fingerprint. The technology will be used in a number of ways, including identifying the illegal trade in endangered species.

The data will be stored on a global database that will be available to scientists around the world. The agreement will be signed at the third International Barcode of Life conference in Mexico City on Tuesday.

"Barcoding is a tool to identify species faster, more cheaply and more precisely than traditional methods," explained Patricia Escalante, head of the zoology department at Mexico's National University (UNAM), which is hosting the gathering.

http://snipr.com/t6189

---

I assume that rare and endangered species will be bar coded first. It will be interesting to see which genes or other DNA sequences they have chosen for this new system. Will they manage to sort out the species of Trillium in the area around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park? The numerous but almost extinct species of Hippeastrum in South America? How about all the dwarf Narcissus species in Spain and around the Mediterranean? Try this site for more information: http://www.barcoding.si.edu/

Growing Nerine from Seed, continued

Malcolm A. in the U.K. responded to my post to the Pacific Bulb Society list on growing Nerine from seeds with some very helpful comments.

He got one Nerine bowdenii bulb from seed to first flower in just two years. He keeps the plants growing continuously, allowing no dormant period; and he waters and feeds the seedlings regularly. He also notes that N. sarniensis seedlings grow more slowly than bowdenii and that [bowdenii x sarniensis] seedlings grow faster than pure sarniensis.

I'm going to step up my feeding and watering of Nerine bowdenii seedlings. If you have had experience growing Nerine from seed, please share your observations with us. E-mail your comments to me at this blog and I'll post them here for you. (My web ISP does not seem to have a fancy blog system, so we do it all by hand.)

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Monday, November 09, 2009, 2:00 PM EST - Indian Summer

El Niño

Our Indian Summer is probably connected with the current El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean. I've not been following this one closely, but it is expected to give the Midwest a milder and drier winter than usual, while the Pacific Coast should be wetter than normal. A mild winter here in Indiana would be quite alright with me, but we'll see.....

Yesterday was a beautiful Indian Summer day here in central Indiana. "Indian Summer" refers to summer-like days that occur in mid to late Fall, after we have had several nights of frost. Yesterday was dry, sunny, and warm, with the afternoon high temperature about 72ºF (ca. 22ºC). My daughter and I took our dogs for a walk on the Monon Trail (an abandoned railroad right-of-way made into a long walking and biking trail).

We had beautiful Fall colors until about a week ago, when it rained and took all the leaves down to the ground. Now we have raked some of them up and we have hauled in the bagged leaves that our friends Terry and Kathy pick up from their lawn on the far northern side of Indianapolis. Composted leaves are fantastic materials for building soil, making new flower beds, and mulch to suppress weeds in summer.

Hardy Gladiolus

Besides the usual hardy glads such as Gladiolus communis byzantinus, G. italicus, G. imbricatus, and G. caucasicus from the Meditarranean and Eurasia, I have had a few corms of Gladiolus oppositiflorus salmoneus from South Africa survive the winter outdoors in the ground for several years.

This glad comes from the Drakensberg, the mountainous escarpment that marks the edge of the high central plateau or High Veld of South Africa. At points, the High Veld reaches 3,000 meters (about 10,000 ft.) in elevation To the east, the low coastal plain, the Low Veld, is warmer and wetter. A few South African bulbs are hardy here in the Midwest, including Galtonia sp., Crinum bulbispermum, Crinum variabile, and this Gladiolus species.
Gladiolus oppositiflorus salmoneus

I've lifted my two surviving clumps of this glad, since I want to increase them in pots before I line them out in the beds again. Otherwise they will gradually dwindle away.

Another hardy glad of South African origins is G. x-gandavensis, which has primrose yellow flowers. Unlike oppositiflorus, gandavensis actually increases nicely in beds here.

There is a primrose yellow form of Gladiolus dalenii, and the form of this old hybrid is very much like that of dalenii. Still, dalenii does not seem to be hardy outdoors here -- but there are so may local ecotypes of dalenii, that there are very probably some quite hardy forms if you could find them or their seeds. So I'm pretty certain that gandavensis is descended from a very hardy form of dalenii from crosses made somewhere in the past couple of hundred years.

Both gandavensis and oppositiflorus have long since finshed flowering and had their tops killed back by frosts. If I were going to lift and propagate gandavensis, right now is when I should do it. But not this year. Instead, I think I'll take Emma for a walk.
Gladiolus x-gandavensis

Happy Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Linda!

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 4:00 PM EDT - Nerine Again

A White Bowdenii

This is an all white form of Nerine bowdenii. The bulbs came from the Croft Nursery in the Eastern Cape Province in 2000 as tiny bulbs. This is the first to bloom, so it took nine years to get here. Croft Nursery has moved in the meantime and is now known as African Bulbs in the Western Cape Province.

This plant has the wider petals of the Eastern Cape Province forms of bowdenii but with a hint of the ruffling of form Wellsii from the Drakensberg.
Nerine bowdenii, white form

Growing Nerine from Seed

A lady from Portland, Oregon sent me an e-mail asking about growing Nerine from seed. I thought this would be a good place to answer her inquiry.

Nerine have small, fleshy seeds that cannot be forced into dormancy, a trait that is referred to as "recalcitrant." Similar seeds are found in other Amaryllis Family genera, including Clivia (1) and (2), Crinum, Brunsvigia, Haemanthus, Hymenocallis, and Scadoxus.

These seeds germinate almost as well lying on a tabletop as when planted. They should all be started by pressing part-way into the surface of a moistened, well-drained potting mix. Take great care not to break off or damage the thin white shoot that the seed sends out. For the potting medium, I prefer a mixture of ProMix BX or HP with Biofungicide, made by Premier in Canada, mixed with sand and small mesh granite grit. The pots are set in a tray and placed under fluorescent lights. Water regularly from below.

I have my lights in a basement room where the temperature is between 68°F and 76°F summer and winter. The lights are on a timer and are turned on for 16 hours each day.

I try to keep the seedling bulbs growing continuously for the first 18 to 24 months if possible. After that, allow the bulbs to grow on their natural growth and dormancy cycles.

Some species grow very slowly from seed. N. bowdenii and also sarniensis can take 5 to 7 years or longer to reach bloom size from seed. N. krigei can take at least as long.

Growing seedlings of bowdenii, krigei, or laticoma in crowded conditions merely retards their growth and prolongs the already lengthy wait for them to reach flowering size. Nerine bowdenii and sarniensis seedlings do not like to be disturbed. Start your seeds in pots large enough to hold a mature bulb, so you do not need to transplant the young bulbs before they have bloomed.

Nerine like most amaryllids seems to need to get a certain minimum biomass accumulated before they will bloom. Even when they reach that apparently critical mass, only about one out of three bulbs of bowdenii will flower in any given year. This genus is not for the impatient or the greedy!

Other species, especially some of the dwarf ones, can bloom in only three or four years from seed. Of these, I recommend Nerine filifolia, filamentosa, appendiculata, and the dwarf from of angustifolia.

For more on the various species of Nerine, see: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/amaryllids/nerine.html and to order some, see our bulbs price list.

The most spectacular Nerine are the many colorful hybrids of Nerine sarniensis (see this blog, October 27, and the Exbury/Vico Nerine web site.) They come in colors from white to pink to peach to orange, red, and burgundy. Some of the older hybrids are aneuploids and do not breed readily with any other hybrids, but most of the Rothschild-Smithers hybrids are probably diploids and fertile with each other.

Some of the forms of Nerine bowdenii should be interfertile with each other, and it has been said that bowdenii has been successfully crossed with sarniensis. I've not seen any plants that I thought were bowdenii-sarniensis hybrids, however.

I have failed to successfully cross most other species onto bowdenii, but I did get one cross, [krigei x filifolia] that appears to be a true intermediate between the two parental species. I have failed to get hybrids with laticoma using krigei, filifolia, and bowdenii. I have even found that some crosses of one bowdenii variety onto another bowdenii type will not take, so you need to experiment to find what crosses you can make in Nerine.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 2:00 PM EDT - Transition to Winter. 2.

Outdoors

In the garden, one clump of Sternbergia is still in bloom, but Crocus nudiflorus and Colchicum atropurpureum are fading fast. A happy surprise was seeing Crocus cartwrightianus blooming for the first time!

These corms came from Jane McGary in 2004 and are just now starting to flower. I had given them up for lost -- crocuses tend not to last long in my garden. This is a beautiful flower.
Crocus cartwrightianus

Indoors

In the warm greenhouse, more Nerine are blooming. Nerine sarniensis 'Exbury Renoir', a truly exquisite flower, is blooming on a bulb from Nicholas de Rothschild's Exbury Nursery.

Note the diamond sparkle to the petals. That sparkle is in the petals themselves, it isn't water on the surface.
Nerine sarniensis 'Exbury Renoir'

Almost as lovely is the very old hybrid, Nerine sarniensis 'Dame Alice Godman'.

Nerine sarniensis 'Dame Alice Godman'

I've only recently learned how to care for Nerine sarniensis varieties properly. They require a dry rest in summer, so keep them warm, but not too hot. Keep their roots bone dry, but mist the bulbs and surface of the potting mix once a month through the summer with plain water.

When they are in growth, they need to be watered regularly but sparingly. Let the potting mix dry between waterings. Feed them sparingly as well, with no nitrogen AT ALL in the fertilizer! This means you need to get a fertilizer with a composition formula N-P-K of 0-10-20 or 0-20-35 or something similar. You can make your own with Potassium sulfate, still quaintly known in horticulture by the obsolete 19th century name "sulphate of potash." Dissolve about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoonful of the dry Potassium sulfate crystals per gallon of water, which will give you 50 to 100 p.p.m. of potassium.

The expression "p.p.m." or "parts per million" means 100 milligrams per liter of solution. You could probably water the bulbs with a solution of 50 p.p.m. of potassium every time you water.

Also in the warm greenhouse are Nerine bowdenii in bloom, in particular there are several pots of "Koen's Hardy" blooming; these came from Aad Koen in Monster, The Netherlands, several years ago.

Finally, I'm waiting for the first bloom on a bulb of a pure white Nerine bowdenii from Cameron and Rhoda McMaster, who are now in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. I received the bulb as a tiny offset or seedling years ago, and it is just now blooming.

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Friday, October 23, 2009, 10:00 AM EDT - Transition to Winter

Distractions

I had a root canal yesterday morning on one of my teeth. This was my first-ever root canal, and it was not bad at all. Of course, it took six hours for the local anesthetics to wear off. I'm just glad it was on a tooth with only one root!

Probably worse was the other day when my dog, Emma, jerked me off my feet while my daughter and I were out walking our dogs together. I'm still sore from my hard landing.

The Last Flowers in the Garden

Today we're in for an all-day rain; yesterday was cloudy all day. So these pictures are from a couple days ago.

The Sternbergia reached full bloom. There are only two clumps left from more than a half dozen groups of bulbs that I planted in various places up to ten years ago.

They make a bright spot of golden yellow in the late Fall garden. I hope to spread the increase from this clump around to other beds in the garden over the years.
Sternbergia lutea

Colchicum atropurpureum are fading.

I'm still very impressed with this colchicum. I'd like to have it in more places, since it starts blooming after all the other colchicums have finished. Its flower is markedly smaller than say, cilicicum, but the color is a very intense red-purple. I love it!
Colchicum atropurpureum

Crocus nudiflorus surprised me by blooming! Over the years I have planted nudiflorus several times, always getting nothing by leaves from clumps that eventually disappeared forever. It seems that most commercial Crocus nudiflorus are a waste of time, money, and garden space.

These corms are definitely worth every iota of time and money. This group of corms came from Jane McGary in Oregon, and they are an excellent strain. They seem to be slowly increasing, having gone from six corms originally to now eight of blooming size.
Crocus nudiflorus

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Saturday, October 17, 2009, 11:00 AM EDT - Nerine Autumn Bloom

New Workstation

About two weeks ago, my old personal workstation (PC) in my office/study died. Two days ago, the new one arrived and was installed. It is much faster than the 7-year old machine that passed away! Still, I missed the old machine while waiting for the new one. I worked on my notebook computer or on one of the other workstations, but none were really comfortable for me. So, the blog lapsed.

Some of what would have gone into it if I had not had the computer loss:

Nerine bowdenii

My bulbs are in bud or in bloom right now, but they can bloom any time from August to early December here. They are almost leafless now, but in January they will start a new flush of leaves and will stay green through summer. These bulbs are native to the high Drakensberg of KwaZulu-Natal and to the mountains of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. They are not hardy enough to bloom outdoors in the ground here in Indiana, but a few of them will survive for several years under heavy mulch.

According to Graham Duncan in "Grow Nerines" (Kirstenbosch Gardening Series, 2002), Nerine bowdenii was at that time one of the most heavily produced cut flowers, being grown in the Netherlands and in the U.S.A. Nerine bowdenii bulbs do not bloom every year, so if you want to see their flowers annually, you will need to grow several pots of bulbs. I grow my flowering size bulbs of bowdenii individually in 1-gal. (7-inch diameter and depth) pots, with only the tips of the bulbs showing above the surface of the potting medium.

Nerine bowdenii "Wellsii" is the form found in the high Drakensberg of KwaZulu-Natal. It is characterized by ruffled petals and sepals and the pink midribs and edges of the petals. The flower shown spans 2 inches across from tip to tip.
Nerine bowdenii "Wellsii"

The bowdenii found in the midlands of the Eastern Cape Province are slightly smaller and less ruffled than the form Wellsii. Also from the Eastern Cape is the white flowered form of Nerine bowdenii that is just now starting to bud in my greenhouse.

Nerine filifolia and others

Still blooming is Nerine filifolia. N. masoniorum finished up a couple weeks ago, and N. filamentosa is just now finished flowering. N. angustifolia "Den's Dwarf" is still going strong.

Nerine filifolia

More Late Flowers

Colchicum atropurpureum came from Robert Potterton in the U.K. in 2001. As far as I can recall, this is the first time it hase bloomed. That doesn't mean it hasn't bloomed till now, since it is small, the bulbs are few, and they are planted a bit off the main track. However, Sternbergia lutea is coming up in bud just a couple of feet away from this Colchicum, so I should have noticed it in past Autumns if it had bloomed. I always watch for the sternbergia to bloom.

Weather has not been cooperating to get a decent photo of this Colchicum. I tried anyway.
Colchicum atropurpureum

This is the very start of the Sternbergia bloom for this Fall. If the sun ever comes out again, I'll get some pictures of them in full bloom.
Sternbergia lutea

Good gardening, from here in central Indiana

Jim

Thursday, October 01, 2009, 10:00 AM EDT - Haemanthus Hybrids

Old Haemanthus Hybrids

Following tips from David Lehmiller of I.B.S., and the PDF file on-line of a paper on this subject, it appears that the various older names for Haemanthus sensu lato hybrids boil down to just two types of crosses: Scadoxus (katherinae X puniceus) and Haemanthus (albiflos X coccineus).

It seems that the plants from Scadoxus (katherinae X puniceus) are fertile, since I received seeds of the F₂ of that cross from South Africa. None have grown large enough to bloom yet, but I am still hoping.

Plants from the old cross Haemanthus (albiflos X coccineus) have recently been re-created. Terry Hatch in New Zealand told me a year ago that he has bloomed numerous seedlings of this cross, and that the flowers come in a wide variety of different colors.

Also in fairly recent years, Aart van Voorst in the Netherlands has converted Haemanthus albiflos to the tetraploid form and has since crossed diploid H. coccineus on the tetraploid albiflos to produce hybrds with various colored flowers and with the additional property of being evergreen. These should have great potential as house plants in the future.

New Haemanthus Hybrids

Besides the Haemanthus 'Burgundy' strain that I have bloomed in the past three years, I have numerous seedlings starting to bloom from Haemanthus (barkerae X coccineus).

This is the second of these hybrids to bloom. The size and shape of the umbel are roughly the same as for barkerae itself, but the color of the bracts is more intense and more orange than for barkerae. The peduncle height is distinctly shorter than for barkerae.
Haemanthus (barkereae x coccineus)
No. 2069.C

I realized just the other day that a cross I though had failed, Haemanthus (albiflos x humilis hirsutus), actually succeeded. I have one surviving seedling from that cross, and it is very similar to albiflos except for one thing: the peduncle is covered with a dense coat of hair, while albiflos has a nude peduncle.

Other than the hairy scape, the hybrid looks very similar to the seed parent, albiflos. When it bloomed for the first time this summer, I even pollinated it with albiflos pollen, thinking it was just another albiflos. I don't know yet whether there will be any seeds from that pollination.
Haemanthus (albiflos X humilis hirsutus)
No. 1539.B

Parent of Haemanthus 'Burgundy'

The pollen parent of Haemanthus 'Burgundy' is in bloom just now. It is Haemanthus coccineus No. 897.A, and its scape this time is fasciated. It has about 15 bracts, compared to 6 bracts on a normal scape. The peduncle is at least twice the width of the normal plant's.

Haemanthus coccineus No. 897.A	Fasciated (rear) vs. normal (front)

Good gardening,

Jim

Monday, September 28, 2009, 3:00 PM EDT - UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Does Mail Order Now

Plants from Berkeley

I recently received an order of plants for the University of California Botaincal Garden at Berkeley. The prices are reasonable, the shipping was fine, and the plants were things I had wanted for a while -- a few Aloe, a couple Agave, a few Arisaema, and two small bulbs of Brunsvigia species. I'm really delighted that the UC Botanical Garden is starting to do mail order sales now.

Check them out at Berkeley Plant Sale and at http://ucbglcs.blogspot.com/. The home page for the garden is at http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu.

An Inquiry

A gentleman in Oregon wrote to ask about Haemanthus humilis, "I have one of these large leaf forms for the past 3 years. It has not flowered but probably is mature enough to flower. I live in Portland, Oregon and have kept it outside in shade during the summer and put in indoors in the winter. It just started to put out new leaves. How low a temperature can these take in a pot?"

My reply: Here in Indiana, I am just putting my humilis humilis (pink) and humilis hirsutus (white) into the greenhouse for the winter. They can take a light frost for a short period of time, but I would not risk them in my zone 5 climate after about October 10th.

Both varieties are kept bone dry over winter in a cool but frost free greenhouse. Once a bulb of humilis humilis gets large enough to bloom, that bulb will then bloom almost every year. In the case of h. hirsutus, the mature bulbs seem to bloom rarely if at all for me. My humilis humilis bloom in early July and leaf out right after blooming. My h. hirsutus bloom in late July and leaf out a couple weeks after that. Two of my hirsutus bloomed this summer, for the first time in probably about 8 or 10 years.

He wrote further, "You mention that you keep them dry during the winter. Should I expect to see leaf dieback as we move into the winter months? In the past, I never really saw what I would call a dormant period perhaps because I kept them in my living room which is too warm to promote dormancy. If the leaves do die off I could move into my garage for the winter. It drops to around 40 degrees and never below."

I would suggest that he let them stay green for at least 3 or 4 month. After that, dry them off completely and do move them to the cool garage. I don't know that Haemanthus humilis requires an enforced dormancy to trigger flowering; but I suspect so, as it is true of most plants in the Amaryllis Family. Haemanthus are of course in the Amaryllis Family.

Burgundy Haemanthus

One of my seedling bulbs of Haemanthus [humilis hirsutus x coccineus] -- all of which bloom with burgundy bracts surrounding scarlet flowers -- is putting up twin scapes this year. This bulb first bloomed in 2007; it was in fact the very first from this cross to bloom for me.

I hope this means it is going to divide. The seed parent (hirsutus) does make offsets, while the pollen parent, coccineus, does not seem to ever offset.
Haemanthus [humilis hirsutus x coccineus]
No. 1534.A

Good gardening,

Jim

Monday, September 21, 2009, 2:00 PM EDT - Some Cacti Sources; Fall is Here

Sources of Hardy Cacti and Succulents

Here are some places that have been recommended to me as sources of cold hardy cacti and succulents. I have not done business with all of these firms, so please let me know your experiences with them. Send comments to <blog@shieldsgardens.com>

• Cold Hardy Cactus http://www.coldhardycactus.com/index.htm
     
  
• High Country Gardens http://www.highcountrygardens.com/
     
  
• Mesa Garden http://www.mesagarden.com/index.html
     
  
• Plant Delights http://www.plantdelights.com/
     
  

From what I am reading, winter cold is not so dangerous as winter wet, especially wet snow. The plants I already have growing have done fine here, but if I get some hardy Agave, it appears that I may need to cover them in winter with buckets or a low poly tunnel.

Chestnuts Ripening

The first tree of Chinese Chestnuts has suddenly started dropping ripe nuts, almost overnight. The nuts on this tree are always smaller than the other two trees' nuts, but the dry summer we are having seems to have made all the nuts smaller than usual.

We have six Chinese Chestnut trees. Three were free or cheap from the National Arbor Day Foundation (it was almost 30 years ago, so that name may not be correct) and the other three I bought, probably from Miller Nursery (mail order fruit trees, etc.) The first three have very small nuts with poor flavor; even the squirrels will not eat them. The three trees from Miller have excellent nuts, sometimes fully as good as the Italian chestnuts we can buy in the fancier food markets. The squirrels love them!

Twenty years ago, I bought a couple seedlings of the hybrid Chinese x American chestnuts trees. Both died within a year of planting. I decided not to try again. It took at least ten years for our Chinese chestnut trees to bear their very first nuts, if I recall correctly. I don't have time to wait for new trees to grow to bearing size.

Chinese chestnut trees are multi-trunk trees of medium size. The leaves are simple with toothed edges. The fruits are a large spiny burr containing one to three nuts. The burrs split open when the nuts are ripe, allowing them to fall to the ground. The nuts shown are about 1.37 inches wide (35 mm.). The leaves are single; this image shows a twig with 7 individual leaves on it.

Chestnuts, including Chinese Chestnuts, are very good to eat. They can be roasted or boiled. In either case, cut through the tough outer skin before heating. Freshly roasted chestnuts are best eaten from the hand on a frosty autumn day, when they go very nicely with a big glass of fresh apple cider. Boiled and peeled chestnuts can be added to sauerkraut, red cabbage, and turkey dressing. Vermicelli made from roasted or boiled chestnuts is good as a dessert, and it's even better topped with whipped cream.

Good gardening,

Jim

Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 6:20 PM EDT - Some Cacti Are Tough

Hardy Cacti and Succulents

We have several hardy cacti growing here. Opuntia humifusa is native to the Midwest, including Indiana. I have some O. humifusa ex hort, from the Indianapolis Zoo. Opuntia phaeacantha is hardy in Colorado, and I have some of this species collected in the wild southeast of Denver. These are very tough cacti. They can even survive a year on top of a fencepost.

A number of others have survived at least one winter outdoors in a sheltered bed. This bed is raised about 6 inches to a foot, filled with gravel, sand, and pea gravel. These include Echinocereus, Escobaria, Pediocactus, and Opuntia:

Echinocereus coccineus Echinocereus reichenbachii caespitosus Echinocereus viridiflorus Escobaria sanbergii Escobaria sneedii Escobaria vivipara bisbeana Pediocactus simpsonii

Opuntia arenaria Opuntia fragilis Opuntia imbricate Opuntia polyacantha 'Crystal Tide' Opuntia viridiflora Opuntia whipplei

   
Pediocactus simpsonii (left) and Opuntia phaeacantha (right). The diameter of the entire Pediocactus plant is smaller than the diameter of the flower on the opuntia.

Yucca filamentosa is of course also hardy here. Visit almost any old cemetery and you'll find Yucca growing there.

Succulents like Sempervivum are on my list. I am interested in trying Agave parryi here for its hardiness as well. I'm not sure what else I might try for hardiness, but I'm open to suggestions.

Time to Refresh your Markers

This is a good time to replace old, faded, and broken markers with new ones. By next Spring, you won't be able to find or read the markers that are marginal this Fall. Do it now!

I am partial to metal markers and I use a Brother PT-2700 label maker for the labels. The TZ line of label tapes have a UV-resistant clear lamination layer which greatly improves the lasting power of these labels outdoors. Highly recommended!

Plastic markers come out of the ground over winter and blow away. You could switch to metal markers, or you could make duplicate plastic markers for each plant and bury one under the soil or under a rock.

Good gardening,

Jim

Monday, September 14, 2009, 12:15 PM EDT - Time to Repot Winter-growing Plants

I'm in the middle of repotting my winter-growing bulbs. Plants grown in containers usually do better if they are repotted every few years. If they are already as big as you want them to mget, put them back into the same size container, even back into the same one you took them out of. Just replace as much of the potting mix as you can without damaging the roots.

They should be replanted just as they are starting to come out of dormancy but before they have a lot of new, tender leaves. This way, they continue growing without suffering a big setback from shock. In fact, I remove very little of the old potting mix. In my case, almost all my repotting is to put the bulbs into larger pots. I want them to get bigger, as many plants cannpt flower until they have built up a certain minimum mass of healthy tissue. They may need to have plenty of carbohydrates stored up to provide the energy needed to manufacture a flower.

To get many bulbs to grow to a big enough size to bloom, you will have to work them up till they are growing in very large containers. David Lehmiller grows his Crinum in 24-inch diameter pots. I have some Crinum growing in 7-gal. pots, but I can't move any pots larger than that so 7-gallon size is my limit. My Zantedeschia aethiopica are moving toward 3-gal. pots and a couple are in 5-gal. pots. I am working my Haemanthus bulbs gradually into individual 2-gallon (9-inch) pots.

Lots of these plants need extensive roots systems as well as big, fat, healthy bulbs. Clivia plants have only their root systems. Growing bulbs in larger pots will get large root systems on your plants faster than crowding them into small pots can ever accomplish.

The corollary to this for summer growing plants is to divide and repot them in spring, just as they are starting to grow again.

When you don't know anything specific to contradict these rules, follow them! A specific exception is Trillium. Experts have found that Trillium survive transplanting and dividing better when it is done immediately after they finish blooming. Trillium produce new roots and new growth eyes on the rhizomes in summer, so the start of summer is the best time to divide them.

Another exception would be Colchicum and Lycoris (at least in colder climates). Dig the bulbs as soon as the leaves die down in mid-summer and replant immediatgely. Don't allow the roots of Lycoris to dry out and die; the Colchicum probably wopn't have any roots.

Good gardening,

Jim

Saturday, September 12, 2009, 3:00 PM EDT - Positive Side of Autumn Coming

I find several positive aspects to autumn coming: The Colchicum start to bloom; the Chinese chestnuts will soon ripen; several of the Nerine species bloom; and this time at least, some Cyrtanthus are blooming!

Colchicum cilicicum 'Purpureum' is blooming in one of the beds. This year it is the first to flower.

The substance colchicine is isolated from plants in the genus Colchicum. Colchicine is used by plant scientists to induce chromosome doubling. It does this by interfering with the function of tubulin inside the cell. At one time it was used to treat gout, but it is generally considered too dangerous to use in human medicine now.
Colchicum cilicicum 'Purpureum'
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Colchicum 'The Giant' has also started to bloom, followed by C. byzantinum. We also have a large group of Colchicum speciosum naturalized in the front lawn.

The genus Colchicum is native to the Mediterranean region and extends west as far as Great Britain and east to Iran and Turkistan. Many of the species are hardy in USDA zone 5.

Among the potted plants, Cyrtanthus montanus, C. sanguineus, and C. [elatus x montanus] have been blooming. These varieties have full, flaring flowers.

This species has only a single flower per scape, and in my greenhouse it flowers only occasionally. I was luck to get two blooms at one with this 6-inch pot.
Cyrtanthus sanguineus
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Cyrtanthus montanus has large erect flared flowers but they differ from sanguineus in having multiple flowers in the umbel and the tepal segments (petals and sepals) are narrower.

My attempt to cross sanguineus with montanus pollen did not yield a seed pod. C. montanus itself occasionally produces a small seed pod, but I have not checked the spontaneous seeds for viability. Even C. [elatus x montanus] sometimes produces a seed pod.
Cyrtanthus montanus
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Nerine [filamentosa x krigei] is a hybrid that I made some years back. The plants seem to be completely sterile, and they are intermediate between the two parent species. I had hopped for some enhanced hardiness -- the filifloia plants supposedly originated near the crest of the Drakensberg Escarpement.

These flowers are blooming late this year, perhaps because I was slow getting them out of the greenhouse and watering them in early summer. The individual blooms are about 2 inches across.
Nerine [filamentosa x krigei]
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Nerine masoniorum is blooming for me for the first time this year. I have the clump in a 2-gal. pot now. Always before, I grew them in a 6-inch azalea pot (only 4 or 5 inches deep).

These flowers are tiny -- only 3/4 inch across.
Nerine masoniorum
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Finally, Nerine platypetala is in bloom. Thus species normally occurs in seasonal marshes where it blooms in standing water. In the past I have grown it in pots sitting in a tray of water all summer long.

This flower is 1¼ inch across. The peduncle (stem) is 12 to 15 inches tall.
Nerine platypetala
© 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

These Nerine species and hybrids are all summer growing plants that are kept bone dry in winter. They sit in their pots on the floor under benches in the greenhouses during the cold weather. They are very easy to grow, since they don't need any care at all in winter.

Good gardening,

Jim

Sunday, September 6, 2009, 1:00 PM EDT - Outdoor Bloom Season Nearing its End

With the flowering of the Colchicum bulbs, the outdoor bloom season is about at its end for 2009.

Colchicum is a genus traditionally lumped into the Lily Family (Liliaceae), but that conglomeration of monocot flowers has been separated into two groups, the Order Asparagales with families like Asparagaceae (asparagus), Alliaceae (onions), Iridaceae (irises), Orchidaceae (orchids), and others, while the true lilies are in the Order Liliales with families like Liliaceae, Trilliaceae, Melanthiaceae, Colchicaceae, and others.

Other plants in the Colchicaceae besides Colchicum include Androcymbium and Gloriosa. I have a couple of species of Androcymbium in the greenhouse, but I've never grown Gloriosa. The Androcymbium may need more sunlight in winter than we get here. I also have a pot of Oxinotis triqueta.

The hardy Hymenocallis occidentalis is also starting to bloom now. The petals span 8 inches, tip to tip.
Hymenocallis occidentalis.

Also in pots, we have blooms on Haemanthus albiflos. This is the commonest Haemanthus in cultivation, and is quite easy to grow in a pot. It would be a fine windowsill plant; leaves are evergreen; and it blooms in autumn. It is not terribly sensitive to moisture, and does not have a dormant period when it must be kept absolutely dry.

I had a bloom on Brunsvigia litoralis this summer. Native to the Southern and Eastern Cape area of South Africa, it is somewhat smaller than the largest members of this genus. This bulb is from seed I planted in 1999, so it took 10 years to reach bloom size! The bulb is currently growing in a 2-gal. pot (about 9 inches in diameter by 9 inches deep) in gritty mix. The individual florets opened one at a time over a period of a couple weeks.
Brunsvigia litoralis.

Also blooming now is one pot of Scadoxus membranaceus. I find this one very hard to get to flower, and this is only the second time I've had one of these to bloom.
Scadoxus membranaceus

The last Lycoris blooming are L. caldwellii, a very hard sterile triploid that should grow anywhere that Lycoris squamigera grows well.
Lycoris caldwellii

An interesting new on-line plant forum is Xeric World at http://www.xericworld.com/forums/featured-discussion-forums/. Take a look at it sometime. Discussion topic include Aloaceae, Cactaceae, Geophytes, and Palms among others. The Amaryllidaceae are in the Geophytes section.

Good gardening,

Jim

Thursday, September 3, 2009, 8:00 PM EST - It's Been a Long Spring and Summer!

Garden Blog for May - September, 2009

I've been a long time getting back to the blog. In fact, it has been over 5 months. My apologies!

Trillium in the Smokies

In early April, I spent four days in Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park area, looking at Trillium in bloom and collecting a few specimens for possible breeding work next year. For the record, I have a research permit for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to study Trillium species there. The permit allows collection of a few plants for the study. Most of the plants I collected came from roadsides outside the park boundaries.

There are two species in the pedicellate group listed that seem to intergrade: Trillium erectum album, the white flowered form of a species that ranges from the Smokies along higher elevations in the Appalachian Mountains northward to Canada, where it spreads out over Quebec and Ontario. Then there is Trillium simile, also white flowered but localized in the lower elevations and limited to the area immediately around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and eastward to the type locality near Tryon, North Carolina.

Susan Farmer in her publication based on her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Tennessee, finds that erectum and simile are not immediate neighbors in the molecular phylogenetic trees she calculated based on DNA sequences of a few genes. None the less, there appears to be a cline (a gradient) from simile around Gatlinburg at about 1200 ft. elevation, with intermediates up to pure erectum album at high elevations, the top being at Newfound Gap (elevation 5000 ft.) and Clingman's Dome (el. 6000 ft.).

The research project is devoted to studying the possibly intimate relationship between these two species.

Another interesting pair of species is T. luetum, with yellow flowers, and T. cunneatum, with red/brown flowers. The plants are both in the sessile group, both grow to be about the same size, look remarkably similar aside from the flower petals, and while the yellow luteum occasionally has a plant with brown petals, the brown cuneatum occasionally has a plant with yellow petals.

Again, Susan Farmer's article does not show them being particularly closely related to one another. And yet, populations of yellow luteum seem to be found occasionally inserted between populations of cuneatum. This is another pair of species whose DNA sequences could probably tell us a great deal.

Albino Flowers?

An interesting discussion erupted in the Spring in the Trillium-L list about the question, just what constitutes an albino flower in the Trillium?

I have my own set of definitions, and I reproduce some of my comments to that list herewith:

What I mean by "albino" is an individual plant or animal that has a mutation that blocks the biosynthesis of a particular class of pigment throughout the entire organism. This would be a mutation that inactivated the gene or gene product. Gene products that are enzymes are what I mean, enzymes that carry out one step in the formation of one product on the pathway to a pigment. Let's refer to genes that code for enzymes as "Structural Genes."

There are other kinds of genes as well -- regulatory genes that directly or indirectly control the synthesis or activity of structural genes or their gene products. Regulatory genes can code for proteins, for RNAs, or they may just be gene promoters, sequences that promote or inhibit the activation of another gene. Regulatory genes make up the differences in color pattern in multicolored flowers, e.g., in Dutch amaryllis like 'Apple Blossom'. The red purple ovary in Trillium erectum album is an example of regulatory genes at work, turning the red color (anthocyanin) biosynthesis pathway "ON" in the ovary and "OFF" in the petals.

If a plant has white flowers but has any pink, orange, or red anywhere else in the plant, it is not a "albino" by my definition.

Note that there are numerous ways to use the term "albino" in regard to plants. A seedling that is totally lacking in chlorophyll is termed an albino, but in this case in regard to the synthesis of functional chloroplasts that contain normal chlorophyll. In the absence of human intervention (e.g., putting the seedling into tissue culture) this is an eventually lethal mutation.

I think that a defect in the biosynthetic pathway for carotenes is probably also lethal in plants. The yellow color from carotenoids may be turned off in flower petals, but if the pathway itself is mutated and non-functional, the seedling with such a mutation probably dies quickly. So we can talk about carotene albinos but I don't think we can produce them.

So, where we are talking about flower colors and anthocyanin pigments, we can call it an "albino" if there is a Structural Gene mutation that prevents anthocyanin synthesis.

If we are talking about preventing anthocyanin synthesis in all or parts of the flowers, but not in other places -- stem, bracts (i.e., "leaves"), sepals, or fruit, we are dealing with operation of Regulatory Genes, and we cannot call those "albino."

Summer's End

The summer, especially July, was cooler than usual. There were many chilly nights. The result was that some Haemanthus started blooming in early August. In August, the Lycoris bloomed, pretty much on schedule. Now at the beginning of September, a few Colchicum flowers have started to appear.

This past month saw one of my bulbs of Haemanthus namaquensis bloom for the first time ever. In fact this is my first-ever bloom on Haemanthus namaquensis. This plant was grown from seed provided by Silverhill Seeds and planted here in 1997. The bulb is growing in a 9-in diameter by 9 inches deep pot in a very gritty mix. The inflorescence is about 7.5 inches tall, of which ca. 2.5 inches is the umbel. The leaves on this particular specimen do not have the wavy edges typical of most namaquensis.

The picture was taken on the peak day of the bloom, Aug. 31st. It's now starting to go over somewhat.

Good gardening,

Jim

Saturday, March 7, 2009, 11:00 AM EST - Peach and Pink Clivias

The greenhouse has been full of Clivia flowers (and pollen!) for almost two weeks now. The plants that have drawn my attention are the peaches, including the 'Victorian Peach' ® mother plants and the Solomone "pinks." In addition , my plant of 'Cameron Peach' is blooming for the first time here.

Cameron Peach is from South Africa. Hobbyists tend to muddy the nomenclaturial waters by randomly applying the parental clone's name (e.g., 'Cameron Peach') to seed-grown offspring, expecially if they more-or-less resemble the named clonal parent. This particular plant should be a vegetative propagation (offset or division) of the original clone named 'Cameron Peach' and it came from Sean Chubb in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Clivia 'Cameron Peach'
Copyright 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

We have some Solomone pinks that we bought from Solomone in the spring of 2005. What the folks there call "pink" is more of a very light peach color, since it is warmer than baby-ribbon pink. I've never seen a Clivia that looked truly pink to me. Never the less, these are very attractive flowers, to my way of thinking. There are the 'Solomone Pink' types, the 'Solomone Watercolor Washed Pink' types, and the 'Charm Pink' miniatures. The difference between the Solomone Pink and the Solomone Pastel plants seems to be intensity of color. The pastels are more intense in color than the pinks are.

This is my best 'Solomone Pink' in bloom this year. It has more florets in the umbel than the others of this group. The picture was taken before most of the buds had opened. I've saved almost all of its pollen for future breeding. I'll eventually cross it with 'Cameron Pink' and the various 'Victorian Peach' ® plants as well as with Conway's 'Tessa'.
Clivia 'Solomone Pink' No. 2010
Copyright 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Solomone's 'Watercolor Washed' series may or may not have the watercolor effect every time they bloom. A few of our examples do show the watercolor washed effect.

This one is almost pink, but regardless of what you call the color, it is a gorgeous flower when in bloom!I intend to use its pollen extensively in future breeding. Click on the image at left and see how it looks under different lighting.
Solomone Watercolor Washed Pink
No. 2005 at full bloom
Copyright 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

This one is what Solomone calls "pastel." The color is usually more intense than the "pink" but is otherwise the same. This one is producing several offsets.
Solomone Watercolor Washed Pastel
No. 2015
Copyright 2009 by Shields Gardens Ltd.
All rights reserved.

These all look to me like "peach" in color. Although cool pink is widely sought after, becvause it is hard to produce in flowers, the peach colors are every bit as pleasing as the pink would be.

Since the late winter lack of bloom in the greenhouses left me with nothing to talk about for over a month, I'd best get this posted today.

Good gardening,

Jim

Thursday, January 29, 2009, 03:30 PM EST - Snow Outside, Flowers Inside

We had 8 inches (20 cm) of snow fall from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning. There was little wind, so there was relatively little drifting (except across our driveway in front of the garage door.) I dug out a path to one of the nearby greenhouses, but I'll leave access to the big greenhouse out back until our commercial snowplow guy gets to us.

Looking out over the deck toward the big greenhouse.

There is a strain or probably a clone of yellow Cyrtanthus in commerce now. It looks like a more vigorous version of Cyrtanthus maakenii cooperi, but I don't really know what it is. I like it, it blooms at a good time of year, and seems to bloom much more prolifically than any of the Cyrtanthus species do.

Yellow Cyrtanthus.

Lachenalia bulbifera is a big, robust, vigorous species, but it gets lanky and tends to flop over. The flowers look like a red hot poker (Kniphofia) but they are not even in the same family.

Lachenalia bulbifera, with the scape leaning toward the sun.

Haemanthus pauculifolius is an evergreen species from the Drakensberg. It is also one of the smallest Haemanthus I have seen. It is a close relative of H. albiflos and H. deformis, but its inflorescence is a much narrower version of the White Paintbrush.

Haemanthus pauculifolius.

You can get an idea of the scale in the picture above from the pot the pauculifolius is growing in -- it is 5½ inches (12.5 cm) square. The new foliage of H. pauculifolius tends to be replacing the old growth at the same time it flowers, so there are always a few dying leaves in sight unless you groom the plant drastically.

I have an interesting Massonia (family Hyacinthaceae, from South Africa) in bloom just now.

Massonia echinata (?)
Giant form from Theronsberg Pass.

The foliage is quite smooth, and I would have innocently called it M. depressa because of that feature alone. The leaves are large, perhaps 10-14 cm wide by 12-16 cm long. However, now that it is in bloom, I see that the flowers are very remarkable. They are filled to overflowing with nectar, and each flower is clasped in a large green bract.

Massonia echinate (?) Flowers Close Up.

This plant is blooming two months later than the other bulbs of Massonia depressa/echinata did. So what is this one really? Is it echinata, or deperessa, or something new? I'd sure like to know!

There are a few other things in bloom or recently in bloom as well. Nerine undulata just finished flowering. Tulbaghia simmerli is in bloom. Lachenalia reflexa's yellow upright tubular flowers are starting to develop their color. Many more Lachenalia have buds showing. Several Clivia are showing new scapes down in the heart of the leaves as well.

Spring should come eventually. Finally, here is geriatric old Homer, using his custom-built ramp to come back up to the door.

Homer coming up his ramp.

Good gardening,

Jim

Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 03:30 PM EST - Depths of Winter

Things are very quiet here in January. Things are slow. Thanks to snow that started falling around 5 AM this morning, what is usually a ten minute drive down to my favorite breakfast place, Cafe Patechou, took 20 minutes driving down at 7:15 AM. An hour later, the drive back home took 30 minutes; but the breakfast was, as always, excellent. The slow drive did give me an opportunity to think about what I might comment on in the blog. And the fine breakfast put me in a mellow mood before I started writing.

Politics

A lot of people, both Republicans as well as Democrats, seem to expect Mr. O'Bama to work miracles! If I don't stop and think for a minute, I find myself expecting the same thing. It isn't going to happen that easily. We don't have 25% unemployment, as we did when I was born in the Great Depression. The only reason we don't have that much right now is that the politicians and economists may have learned a bit since then; Keynes once again reigns supreme. Unfortunately, the denizens of Wall Street obviously have not learned.

Weather

We just got the December gas bills for heating the greenhouses. They are up 50% from our highest December gas bills in the last 3 years, and it is only partly due to increasing prices for natural gas. Cold weather arrived with November this year, and has not let up except for the occasional 2- or 3-day blip of unseasonably warm weather. We are heading into two or three days of lows at 0°F to -10°F -- colder than we have had in the last 5 years if not longer. Simultaneously, they are having record high temperatures in Northern California.

How can Global Warming make our winter colder? It's pretty simple if you understand a little physical chemistry or physics. The atmosphere plus the oceans constitute a big heat engine. Think of the gasoline engine in your car, but driven by the heat of the sun rather than by burning gasoline. The more "fuel" (i.e., heat energy) you put into the engine, the more work it can do. Making record heat in one part of the world and near-record cold in another part takes a lot of work. The engine is driving us farther from equilibrium, the nice average of summer and winter, highs and lows, that we all generally prefer, because we are heating the engine up. Global warming.

Homer

My geriatric old dog, Homer, likes this cold weather. He seems to think he is part polar bear! He goes out day or night to lay on the ground for a half hour at a time. Homer is over 15 years old now, and he gets pain pills, thyroid pills, and more, twice a day. Somehow, he just keeps on going. He couldn't walk up the steps from the yard to the deck last year, so we had a handyman build a ramp for him. He uses that now to return from his outings in the yard.

Homer is not alone in reaching a very old age for a large dog (Homer weighs about 55 lb. or about 25 kg.) Thanks to rapidly improving verterinary medical care for domestic animals, many large old dogs like Homer are living far longer than they used to. I suspect that much of this progress in animal health care is fall-out from the dynamic growth of human medicine over the last half centry or so. Thank the N.I.H. for geriatric pets!

Flowers

We will have the annual meeting of the Midwest Clivia Club here at our home and greenhouse on Saturday, March 28th, at roughly noon to 4 PM. Hopefully, we will have a lot of clivias in bloom at that time. In any case, we will have a buffet lunch at around noon for those who RSVP to us by about March 15th.

Right now, there are only a couple clivias in bloom, mainly the Belgian hybrids. Because we have had very little sunshine so far this autumn and winter, they are not the advertised dark red-orange, but are a bit paler. There is also one Clivia gardenii in bloom and one interspecific hybrid of uncertain ancestry. In these two cases also, the light colors of the present flowers may not indicate what they would look like grown under the bright sunshine of Southern California or South Africa.

Also in bloom are a couple pots of Yellow Cyrtanthus. These are a vigorous, robust strain or clone of Cyrtanthus maakenii cooperi. I'm not sure whether they have a proper cultivar name or not. They at least bloom reliably every year and at a time when very little else is blooming.

My large pot of Narcissus papyraceus has put up one stem of small white flowers. They bloom at a time of year when any flower is greatly appreciated. Other Narcissus species in the greenhouse are not blooming so far this winter.

Among the little else in bloom are the Lachenalia. The L. rubidum and L. viridiflora are past now, and others such as L. bulbifer are starting. You need a very cool place with lots of bright light to grow these well, and our light is almost strong enough for them. They are in the cool greenhouse, where temperatures run down to about 40°F on cold nights. This house is mostly full of Haemanthus in full leaf and growth this time of winter. The Haemanthus finished blooming in October, and the next won't bloom until H. montanus flowers in this coming June.

We need to focus our thoughts on the coming of Spring. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the days have been getting longer for the last 3 weeks, and in a few more weeks the coldest part of winter will be safely behind us. Think good thoughts about Spring flowers to come.

Good gardening,

Jim

Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 03:30 PM EST - Gardening in a Recession

We are in a full scale economic recession, at least in the U.S.A. Granted, unemployment is only 6.7% so far, compared to the ca. 25% at the peak of the Great Depression of the 1930s. So it is still just a recession, but that's bad enough. The most optimistic estimate I've seen says this will still get worse before it starts to get better again, and it will last at least through the next 18 months. So what can you do in the garden in a situation like this?

If you are working reduced hours or not at all, if money is getting to be in short supply, making a garden to grow some of your own food could ease the pressure on what money you still have. Making a garden is not free, but it does not have to be so expensive that your would be better off just buying your vegetables at the supermarket.

If you stay at home all day, and live in the country, you might start growing some of your own food next spring. If you work full time and live in the city, you might not find it worth the bother. If you garden with lots of pesticides, they will cost you more than the produce you grow would cost at the supermarket.

How Much

If you have the time and the space, remember the rule, "One man, one acre." That is, one person working approximately full time can properly care for a garden of at most one acre. And that is an optimistic estimate, made years ago by a professional German gardener in good physical condition. It will be hard work.

You will need to do your own weeding, mainly by hand but supplemented with mulching. Your composted mulch (start your compost pile now!) will help by replacing much of the fertilizer you might otherwise need to buy. You will need to go after as many insect pests by hand as you can manage. Tomato hornworms, cabbage butterfly larvae, and even to some extent squash/zucchini borers, can be limited by diligent hand picking when they get large enough to see.

What to grow

What to grow? That will depend on geography as much as on your personal preferences in vegetables. Here in central Indiana, in USDA zone 5, where we get 35 to 40 inches of precipitation per year, more or less evenly spread through the twelve months, we can grow spring crops like garden peas, lettuce, and radishes. For summer, green beans, zucchini, sweet corn, and tomatoes are no-brainers, while more exotic things like muskmelons depend very much on microclimate and how far you want to go to ameliorate climate. To extend the growing season, you can try putting polyethylene tunnels over some of the rows and grow the marginal crops in the tunnels.

For a balanced diet, you need carbohydrates from crops like potatoes, garden peas, and sweet corn. You need protein from things like beans of all sorts. You need vitamins and minerals from things like salad greens and fruits. Things like broccoli and brussels sprouts may be growable and are first rate nutritional resources.

Homework

What you can grow in your particular geographical area and climate will vary. Now is the time to start researching things, before the seeds show up in the garden centers in a scant few weeks. Do your homework now, so you don't waste your resources in the growing season. Select those varieties that are timed to mature in periods no longer than your local growing season.

Water is a worry no matter where you garden. Here in the Midwest, we know to expect drought periods as well as flooding. Creek bottom land is great, until you get a solid week or two of rain that floods it and kills all your plants. Be prepared as well to supplement natural rainfall during dry spells, so place your garden within a garden hose length of a well or sillcock. You can buy garden hose in rolls up to at least 100 feet in length, but those long hoses are heavy to move. It's better to get four 50-ft. hoses to string together rather than two 100-ft. hoses. You'll thank me when you try to put those hoses away next autumn.

To Garden or Not to Garden

A "recession" garden, like the Victory Gardens of World War II, is a response to a crisis. Is your crisis condition going to be improved if you devote the time, energy, and money to creating a vegetable garden? Are there better ways to ease the crisis conditions in your personal situation than to make and maintain a garden? The more ambitious your garden project, the more likely you are to end up with surpluses. Are you prepared to preserve the surpluses for use after the garden season ends? If it's a good idea to make a garden, it would probably also be a very good idea to preserve any surpluses you obtain.

Note that we are not addressing questions of the environment, nor of more healthful food for your family, nor of gardening as therapy for your soul. We are just looking at making a garden as a way of dealing with some of the problems associated with living through our current economic situation. Good luck!

Good gardening,

Jim

Monday, December 15, 2008, 03:30 PM EST - Flowers for the Season

The first flowers I think of for the Christmas Season are poinsettias. They are deeply ingrained in my subconscious mind for the time of year. Still, they are not the only flowers we can have in bloom for Christmas. The Dutch hybrid "amaryllis," really Hippeastrum, are also readily available and ready to bloom. Rare in the U.S.A. but common in Europe are the Belgian hybrid clivias, forms of Clivia miniata.

Ubiquitous now wherever flowers are sold are orchids. A few years ago they were considered rare and exotic. They are available year round and in a multitude of colors. Most seem to be phalanopsis, the moth orchids; but you occasionally see oncidium hybrids, the so-called dancing doll or butterfly orchids.

All of the plants are treated as annuals and are discarded as soon as their flowers fade. However, if grown as houseplants or in a greenhouse, all are perennial. All of them can live a very long time and rebloom in later years.

Poinsettias originated in Mexico, and they grow as large bushy shrubs in warm climates. The biggest problem with growing them as perennials is their susceptibility to white flies. These can be controlled by using a systemic insecticide regularly. Getting them to flower requires some attention to day length. In winter, they need to be in an area that does not get artificial light. A few months after being exposed to uninterrupted nights at least 14 hours long, they will produce their tiny flowers surrounded by the characteristic large red bracts. In nature and in your house, they will bloom naturally around Easter rather than at the Christmas season.

The Dutch amaryllis are long lived bulbs. Although their wild ancestors are native to South America, the popular large flowered hybrds were developed in the Netherlands. These days, many are also grown in South Africa; while the least expensive bulbs will come from India in all probability. The amaryllis are dormant in autumn and winter, and they may or may not lose their leaves during their dormant period. Well-grown bulbs will produce two flower stalks per year. They have been selected over the years for that trait.

Orchids are both the easiest and the hardest flowers to carry over.

I have Oncidium orchids that I've had for ten years of pretty bad neglect. They don't look very pretty now, but they survive. On the other hand, it can be a serious challenge to get orchids to bloom again in following years. The oncidiums tolerate strong lightly dappled sunlight and humidity from low to high. They just need to be kept watered at regular intervals and fed occasionally.

The Phalanopsis orchids need moderate light, moderate temperatures, and fairly high humidity. The problem for growing them as house plants will usually be keeping the humidity high enough for them to form and carry a new bloom stalk. They do not tolerate the sort of neglect that oncidiums can endure.

The Cattleya orchids vary widely in ease of bloom. I have one lovely big white cattley that seems to bloom every year about this time with only minimal care during the year. It is certainly worth the little trouble it gives just for the beautiful flowers.

Cymbidiums are terrestrial orchids that not only tolerate but which need some pretty chilly temperatures in autumn in order to produce flowers in winter. Mine are mainly hand-me-downs from friends who otherwise treat them as annuals. I happily accept the bloomed-out plants, divide them, and repot. Several are in scape right now.

Good gardening,

Jim

Monday, November 24, 2008, 05:30 PM EST - Comments on Nerines from John Weagle

We just had our first hard frost this week in Halifax, then Friday night we got clipped by a nor'easter that dumped 30-cm of snow. Hopefully it will be gone in a week but you never know. It certainly put an end to the Nerine bowdenii in bloom against the house as the temperature fell to -4c before the snow started. This bowdenii is the sole survivor of a dozen bulbs I planted maybe 20 years ago. It only started bloom a few years when the city limbed up an old linden street-side.

This may be Pink Triumph but I'm not certain.

A kind fellow in Sweden is sending me seed of var. wellsii which is said to be much hardier, he grows it in the open garden away from the warmth of the house foundation. I'm wondering if you have found var. wellsii significantly hardier than the bowdenii of the trade or, any other Nerine species for that matter? N. krigei is said to be hardy but I know of no one who has it let alone growing outside.

In 1996 I got seed of about 20 hand-pollinated crosses from Sir Peter, some interesting colours have come from the seed. Presently I have about 30 pots of bulbs from those crosses. I dearly wanted to decipher some of the parents listed only by code number in their complex parentages. I emailed Dr. Paul Chapman in the UK and he kindly sent me Sir Peter's spreadsheets listing all the Nerine crosses he had done as well as another file cross-referencing the crosses with his final selections. When I opened the excel file I was shocked me to see that Sir Peter had recorded the male parent first. Now I have to decide if I have to reverse all the crosses in my files, an onerous task requiring great care as these are very complex crosses! I wrote to Nicholas de Rothschild at Exbury Gardens, the repository of Sir Peter's many hybrids. Nicholas thought the whole exercise useless and he may very well be right. It occurred to me we would probably trace everything back to old Nerine cultivars and the original Exbury plants that Sir Peter used, sadly to my knowledge we do not know the parentages of these old hybrids either. So back to square one. One wonders just how many species are involved in these crosses anyway - just sarniensis? - and if so where did the colour range come from? Is there such variation in the wild? Any thoughts?

Attached is a shot of some of the seedling pots as I was cleaning the greenhouse for winter several weeks ago. If I were to plant each bulb separately I would need an acre under glass.

John Weagle's Nerine Seedlings Blooming

I am just back from eastern Newfoundland where they have had Crocosmia aurea in their gardens for years. C. paniculata survived for 10 years here in Halifax against a greenhouse wall but recently disappeared when the ground froze deeply. Only Lucifer survives in Halifax, mainly in others' gardens as I cannot winter it at all. Friends here say it can skip a year after a hard winter and then mysteriously grow back and flower the same year. In extreme southern NS it is very vigorous. I wonder which ones might be hardy for you, realizing, of course, that your soil does not freeze as deeply as it can here on occasion.

I have just given my Crocosmias to a friend in the south of NS and they have now been planted out in 9 long trenches. It will be interesting to see how they fare.

One last question. I have had several large pots of Lycoris radiata since 1976 and have never seen a flower. Perhaps we simply do not have enough summer heat to set buds. Do you think there are any of the Chinese species hardy outside or reliable bloomers?

Best regards,
John Weagle
Halifax, NS
Canada