planting offsets

Richard Haard richrd@nas.com
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:37:04 PDT
Jim

History of the flower bulb industry in Washington State By Charles Gould. 

This is a great review of the beginnings of flower bulb production in Western Washington. Commercial production started in Bellingham, adjacent San Juan Islands and has migrated south over the years into SW Washington and Oregon because of winter kill issues. 

We are subject to occasional frigid blasts from BC interior down the Frasier River Valley and have seen single digit temps at our place. No winter kill to my species mix yet..... knock on wood. I'm focused on open pollinated, native strains. 

Rich

On Oct 4, 2011, at 1:55 PM, Jim McKenney wrote:

> Rich, I wasn't going to respond to this until I noticed where you're writing from. Did you know that not quite a century ago Bellingham, Washington was a hot bed of lily breeding? In the time between the First and Second World Wars David Griffiths had thousands and thousands of seedlings of lily hybrids derived from (he assumed)  Lilium humboldtii crossed with, among other species,  Lilium pardalinum and other west coast species. Out of these he selected about a dozen to be named and clonally propagated. Sadly, few if any of the named cultivars survive. The one to persist longest in the trade was 'Shuksan ' and I grew it decades ago. 
> 
> Lilies of this type were long sold under the name Bellingham Hybrids (and may still be). I would not be surprised if much of what is sold as Lilium pardalinum in the mass distribution catalogs are these Bellingham hybrids. 




More information about the pbs mailing list