PBS Forum

I agree on the damage in bud, as the stem leaves look good. 

I grow Babiana, am in the Pacific Northwest, and would recommend planting, watering a little, but keeping cool for the summer to keep the bulbs from drying out. Which reminds me, I need to rescue mine from under a sword fern before fall comes. 

I planted 5 Amaryllis belladonna bulbs from my parents' yard about 25 years ago. The original bulbs were planted 100 years ago by the first owner of that house. 

These are pink, no stripes, not dark, not white, plain pink, and in my climate usually flower between mid August and late September, depending on  how warm the summer is. Leaves are up from mid fall through mid spring.

This week I dug up the last three clumps, as they had divided so much that the upper bulbs were at the surface. I found 30-40 bulbs in each clump, with more than 100 in all. I replanted one in each original hole, and now have over 80 bulbs looking for a new home. 

If anyone is interested, please contact me using my email address, kathleen.sayce@gmail.com. Your cost will be whatever the shipping costs are. 

Lost Flower Makes a Stunning Return
From New Scientist, 4 November 2023, in Really Brief section on page 19

The mini galaxy (Moraea minima), a small plant with pale yellow iris-like flowers, is unique to a tiny area of South Africa. It hadn't been seen since 1981 and was thought to be extinct, but it has now been found blooming in the middle of a gravel road.

I agree, keep them in the pot until they go dormant, check the tuber size then. If still quite small (pea to dime sized), leave intact for another year if all of them have a little room to grow. Move into brighter shade slowly, most cyclamen do not need more than bright shade to do well. 

Huntington Gardens's corpse flower is starting to open-this is the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP62Xh_12z0 
Here's the main page: https://huntington.org/corpse-flower , which also has a time lapse video from 2022.

Some years ago on a cool, cloudy damp spring day, I planted a pot of stream orchid, Epipactis gigantea, in the lowest, wettest part of my garden. This species grows naturally in the freshwater tidal area of the Columbia River, which is 15 miles south of my home, and which has extensive freshwater marshes for many miles upriver. Mid summer flowering of both stream orchid and tall white-flowered Veratrum californicum are outstanding features of these marshes. 

I was eager to try this native orchid in my yard, hoping that it would establish. I mulched it, watered it, and went for the slug bait, just in case. When I returned, there were two pulmonates approaching the new plant to check it out. One was a brown garden snail, the other a leopard slug. In hindsight, the leopard slug was probably hunting the snail. 

I gave the orchid a good ring of slug bait and then let it decide if it wanted to live in my garden. It did persist for three years, and then either pulmonates or dry summers, or both, were too much for it and it disappeared. 

I have never been able to bring myself to do annual or semiannual full garden treatments of slug bait, because this would kill so many native slugs and snails along with the introduced species. 

I'm going to give soaking a try. All are going to new homes in the PNW, where local nurseries are pleased to get them. Thanks for all your ideas. 
I like organza bags too, but it turns out that voles also eat through them to get tasty seeds. Soak in hot pepper oil first to deter voles? 

Do you have tips on how to clean Trillium seeds? I've used dry sand in the past, and find it tedious and prolonged. This may be the usual process? Found 2 T. kurabayashi pods in my garden today--usually wasps/ants +? get them all before I
do.

This all reads like I need to be vigilant with slug bait. Thank you for the comments. 

Grown from seed purchased years ago from Alplains Seeds. Would like to know how vulnerable Veratrums are to voles, slugs and snails. This year, a very pleasant surprise, a flowering stem emerged. I have one relatively moist garden spot that is usually shady, but need to resolve the slug question before I move it out of the mesh frame. 

 I ended up with cyclamen in many pots by reusing old (5 years+) potting mixtures. Lovely, but annoying as of course now all are unidentified.

A small success, but mine own:  between deer, squirrels, voles and slugs, Fritillaries have a tough time in my garden, but in a mesh frame, with a boundary of iron pellets to keep the slugs away, this year I have flowers!

Adorable spouse and I built a cold frame in 2005. This let me buy plants as they came available 800 miles to the south of my garden, and hold them for 6-8 weeks. Then came climate warming, and voles, and general creakiness. Last year I realized that I had more use for mesh frames than cold frames now. So out it is coming. If you are interested in the durability of ground contact wood, see what happens to this product in less than 20 years. Image rotated so that this former corner is oriented with the bottom down and the top up. It probably would not have lasted another 3-5 years. 

Forgot to mention that McRae's book is available, and a very good resource.
Lilies:  A guide for Growers and Collectors, by Edwin Austin-McRae.