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I was thrilled that Crinum 'Stars and Stripes opened today.

Hello Wylie,

That is a very beautiful plant! Are the colours as brilliantly contrasting in reality?

Thank you for sharing!

This is the night blooming tropical waterlily hybrid Antares. It is the second season I am growing it, the dormant tuber spent the winter in a non heated basin in the greenhouse and sprouted when the water warmed up. I was skeptical about night blooming waterlilies especially red ones because red becomes invisible in the dark. But the flowers open fairly early in the evening and remain open almost until midday when the day blooming ones take over. This way there are open flowers all day.
Uli 

Photos of the unknown plant I mentioned at the end of June, the flowers are now opening.

Quote from: Uli on July 08, 2023, 01:32:41 PMHello Wylie,

That is a very beautiful plant! Are the colours as brilliantly contrasting in reality?

Thank you for sharing!

The red is stronger on the outside than the inside, but not by much. Here is a late opener:

But the buds are also an attraction:

Quote from: David Pilling on July 08, 2023, 06:30:13 PMPhotos of the unknown plant I mentioned at the end of June, the flowers are now opening.

Looks like Ornithogalum caudatum syn. Albuca bracteata to me 

Quote from: Uli on July 09, 2023, 02:02:38 AMLooks like Ornithogalum caudatum syn. Albuca bracteata

Thanks Uli.

The candystripe crinums are very desirable.

Hi, I recently started emailing Jean-Marc Tison, the French botanist responsible of the new Flora Gallica - Flore de France and quite an expert on geophytes.

I showed him a local Allium and he immediately recognised it as a possibly unnamed taxon he knew from Andalusia.

So last Saturday I went to the nearest site I knew it from to collect some specimens for the herbarium and to keep in my collection.

There they were, and also an unexpected surprise, Acis valentina in bloom because of the rains in late spring and early summer.














Carlos Jiménez
Valencia, Spain

Currently all the bulbs flowering in my garden are alliums.  The bees are delighted.

Various kinds of chives, lots of leeks - I guess I forgot to eat them all last winter. 

The ones in the photos are a kind of leek which is called Elephant Garlic. It is as tall as me when it flowers.  It has big bulbs which taste like a mild garlic.  When I pull them up, bulbils are left in the ground so I never have to replant them - they do it themselves.  I've read that if I don't let them flower I will have bigger bulbs - maybe I'll try that with a few of them next year.  I'll eat the scapes instead.

I wonder what anyone thinks this is.

It looks like an anemone to me, my guess would be anemone leveilii, it is flowering right now.

Is it a bulb...

Anemone leveilii is supposed to have purple-blue anthers

The photo on https://www.ballyrobertgardens.com/products/anemone-leveillei  shows them., and so does your flower.

Certainly helps narrow the possibilities, but others have purple-blue anthers, too, lie rivularis.  But I don't know enough to even have an educated guess for the ID.  You very well could be right.

Thanks for the responses. This plant has just appeared, I can't recall planting it, and it is in an odd place. But it is unlikely to be a self-setter. Way back I probably had a go at growing from seed. I should look at my records. Probably planted 10 years or more back and this is the first time it has flowered.

It is "Japanese anemone" time of year, they're starting to flower.

Looking at the seed I had, all that time ago, I should have a garden full of different types of anemones.

about an hour left in July here and mostly recovered from Stuttgart pride, time to wrap up july. Basically, the month was spit in half: very hot& dry first part, cooler moist second half - which had a lot of effects on plants. first pic: that's the same lily cultivar - the stalk in front had opened  flowers in the hot phase.

Next two pics is another of those "maybe geophyte" types: a Dorstenia, sold as Dorstenia verdickii which seems to be a synonym for Dorstenia benguellensis. It grows from a flat disc with a center grove, somewhat resembling an Aroid corm, and is really more of a curiosity than a beauty. Family Moraceae, central Africa.

One victim of the rain is Rhodophiala advena

- the night after this picture it was razed by slugs. you just have to admire their exquisite taste.

Ipomoea lapathifolia is another one of the African caudex morning glories - I hope for a better picture if one opens up on a free day of mine - morning glories, enemy of the working population.

Earlier this month I had a few flowers of Tricyrtis latifolia, an early, wide-leafed toad lilly with a yellow-ish base color - another new plant, so more to follow on how well it deals with my climate

Néxt one is a pot of Eucomis zambesiaca

- always my first one to flower, but the bigger species are about to open as well.

Last one is Acis autumnalis

Height:	10-20 cm (3.9-7.9 inch)
Flower Colors:	white, pink
Flower Season:	early autumn
Life form:	bulb

in its earliest edition ever - together with the cold spring, this cold and wet intermezzo has lead to a full bloom of acis before my first dahlia opens. Climate changes steadily, but weather's always good for surprises...

I had no idea flowers from the same plant could look so different due to weather differences during budding & flowering.  That morning glory is gorgeous, too.