Favorite Yellow Flowered Bulbs--TOW

Lee Poulsen wpoulsen@pacbell.net
Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:03:49 PST
First of all, why do so many of you dislike yellow so much (and orange 
even more so it seems; Cathy Craig has been telling me since I met her 
that she can't stand most orange flowers)?! I would hate it if that 
part of the spectrum were missing from flower colors. But then again, I 
was a huge fan of the 64 colors box of Crayola crayons back when I was 
a kid. I had to have my very own box because I didn't want any of my 
younger brothers or sisters playing with them because they might lose 
one of the colors--I even saved up my allowance money to purchase my 
own box!  :-)  I guess I really like intensely hued versions of all the 
"major" colors on the color wheel, in flowers and also in birds and 
tropical fish. Are we going to step our way around the color circle 
with TOWs?

Here is a list of some yellow flowers I could think of that I like in 
particular:

1. Yellow Clivia miniata--especially this one unnamed variety that 
Shige Sasaki found among a group of Joe Solomone's yellow Clivias when 
he and Masashi came to visit and Harold Koopowitz took them up there to 
visit. It was the most intense deep butter yellow Clivia I've ever 
seen. No paleness whatsoever, almost but not quite a golden yellow with 
no hints of orange or pink at all, that almost glowed. It looked almost 
like a melted yellow crayon in color. I hope he gets its genes into the 
gene pool soon.

2. Bright yellow Division 1 or 2 daffodils or masses of yellow jonquil 
type narcissus. No names in particular. There is an area of the 
foothills of the Sierra Nevada in central California where you can 
drive down the country highways in spring and see massive drifts of 
yellow daffodils scattered all about. I think it's breathtaking.

3. New favorite: Paramongaia weberbaueri. What can I say? These are 
awesome flowers. The next one is about to bloom, maybe tomorrow, and a 
third one is now sending up a scape! What would a field of these look 
like in bloom? I read that in Peru bunches of these are sold and the 
scented air around the sellers is very memorable.

4. Lycoris aurea that bloomed for me the first time last year. Nice 
gold yellow color. And I really like the flower shape; it's so 
intriguing.

5. The yellow-based Lachenalias, esp. this one hybrid I found at a 
local alternative grocery store chain (Trader Joe's) that is the same 
size and shape of L. bulbifera, but was a solid, intense, butter 
yellow. I hope it re-blooms this year.

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10


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