February 2025

[Carlos]

Ah, yes, I always forget that you are in the UK...

I only have one accession of jonquilla, it came from a village in Madrid province, probably from a wild population.i have never searched for offsets but I have to repot them and I will have a look.

That dwarf Petasites must be lovely...

[CG100]

Things can change at any time, but for non-commercial imports of plant material into the UK from the EU, the introduction of requirements for phyto' cert's have been postponed again.

I am registered to import and received an email early in 2024 that the restriction were being rolled out, country by country, starting with NL. It was later abandoned. 
I suspect that our systems cannot get near to coping. An awful lot of imports into the UK from outside of the EU used to arrive via Rotterdam, where the checks were made, since leaving the EU all checks have to be made in the UK.

[Robert_Parks]

Strange..................

I have always bought for scent, no matter the plant. I am as likely to pass along a row of roses, for instance, in a nursery smelling each, as looking at the blooms.
One great shame is that the now near ubiquitous Tete-a-Tete lost its scent when being bulked up for sale on a massive scale. Back when it was new and scarce, maybe 25 years ago, the flowers had a glorious scent, all that I have smelt over the past 10+ years have had none.

The yearly winner of the scent contest in my garden (despite the paperwhite's efforts) has been Melasphaerula graminea. A single escapee bulb (in a pot of Amorphophallus) put up a flower stalk in September, and has been blooming for 5 months now, scenting the well ventilated greenhouse with sweet honey.

Robert
in currently rainy San Francisco (5 weeks with no rain through January)

[Diane Whitehead]

It's strange that yours is sweetly scented.

This is what PlantZAfrica wrote about it:

The unpleasantly scented, sour and putrid odours emitted by the flowers, attract small March Flies (a nectar-feeding fly) which appear to be the only pollinators of these tiny, dull-coloured, short-tubed flowers. Ants are possibly responsible for the dispersal of the seeds. 

[Robert_Parks]

It's strange that yours is sweetly scented.

This is what PlantZAfrica wrote about it:

The unpleasantly scented, sour and putrid odours emitted by the flowers, attract small March Flies (a nectar-feeding fly) which appear to be the only pollinators of these tiny, dull-coloured, short-tubed flowers. Ants are possibly responsible for the dispersal of the seeds.

Unless there is a exact lookalike plant, this is what it is. I just went back out and I do get a muskiness, but not unpleasant, and underlying the sweet and honey. I know I can smell nasty odors, since I grow Amorphophallus and Typhonium. It also doesn't appear to be self-fertile, although other plants, outside, last year, set copious seed.

In any case it is sufficiently attractive and tolerant of shade to get a garden opportunity...so long as it produces vast numbers of white shading to rich yellow tiny flowers, it can smell any way it wants!

I wonder how this BX bulb performs for others?

Robert

[CG100]

I have sown it twice, but have nothing left to show for that effort.
My sources are only as already mentioned, plus here on PBS, so I was curious about your comments about scent.

I have only seen pic's of Melashaerula so can't be certain, but Walleria may have a roughly similar habit, but good scent. Silverhill may still have seed, but I had reasonable germination and now have quite a few tubers around the size of a very large pea.
I bought and sowed the seed around a year ago and they grew all summer, even though they are supposed to be winter-growers. They haven't done very much since August/September when most died-back and any that did stay green, stopped growing.

Scent is a strange thing. I have Sparaxis macculosa in flower at the moment, which is supposed to be scent/odour-less. To me it smells very slightly but obviously of something like damp/musty cardboard.
In quite a few flowers that last for days or more, scent can change a great deal too, which often means that accounts say that scent is reported as this that and the other, but it is just due to the age of the flower.

[Carlos]

@CG100  I will have a try.Romulea from the northern hemisphere continue to baffle me.. Romulea grandiscapa is a stunner from the Canary islands, it perhaps produces the widest flower in this area. Strangely, it has been lumped as a variety / subspecies of R. Columnae, which has flowers that fit in a 10 cents coin (a bit bigger than a dime).




Romulea ramiflora, two accessions (one is sold as 'rollii' from Chios island by Oron Peri, but it's obviously not).




Romulea malenconiana from Morocco. I was lucky enough to get one strain / clone collected by Salmon, Bird and Lovell and still true to type. It has an amazing feathering combined with wite. Some say that it belongs in ligustica, but I din't think so.



Some individuals of malenconiana are just incredible, like this one:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150305077

More R. leichtliniana, two plants with different colours.



And a comparison between 'true' bulbocodium and the eastern leichtliniana.

[Too Many Plants!]

Romuluea Tortuosa from a 2023 BX (I believe).

Updates...another flower opened, and a guard friend on one of the flowers.

[Too Many Plants!]

Another rogue non Geophyte post.

Part of my South Africa Cape (mostly) Garden that I find so fun. I imagine it in habitat hanging out with some of the geophytes we grow.

Gibbaeum Dispar.

[Carlos]

Nive Romulea @Too Many Plants! 

Side view of R. crocea



Narcissus gaditanus. The smell apparently shifts from a quite typical jonquil smell to somethimg similar to effervescent vitamin C pills.




Narcissus romieuxii zaianicus. Surprisingly similar to the blancoi found in Spain.



And Tulipa agenensis 'sharonensis', a fantastic tulip from the Palestinian coast which is showy and has a reasonable size, but does not need a cold winter. There are very few tulips which can be grown well in zone 10, but this one seems just right.

[Arnold]

Scilla peruvianna

[Wylie]

We got enough sun for the Oxalis purpurea 'Garnet' to have a flower open.

[Arnold]

Scilla peruviana
Lachenalia reflexa

The flowers of L. reflexa never seem to fully open above the top of the soil level.

[Carlos]

Lovely stuff

still in love with Romuleas and Narcissus 


Clusiana from Gibraltar, these come from the first seeds I got in an SX, from Gibraltar ex Oron Peri through Uli Urban.



Requienii



Tempskyana from Pamphylia, Turkey



Ramiflora wild, yesterday


Gagea foliosa



Moraea sisyrinchium. I hope to be back when those thousands of plants are in flower. 



Drimia purpurascens

[Wylie]

Normally, it rarely gets below 10°C where I live on Terceira. Pico, the dormant volcano and highest point in all of Portugal, on the island of Pico does get snow. Yesterday, it got down to 4°C and a hail storm passed through. It turned the ground in my front yard white for about an hour. You can see the jonquils starting to flower, the lilies are growing, some crinums, and a lot of evergreen type daylilies