April photos

[Martin Bohnet]

So what should I say - it's spring, there are Flowers. lots of them. Lets start with a parrot tulip - Luckily, they just called this one "Mysterious Parrot", sparing me the trauma @David Pilling had to face with that blue parrot thing...

Talking about trauma: the Pleiones really suffered last hot summer, leaving me with about 10 flowers in my whole collection - let's see if they regenerate or future, likely even warmer summers will kill them off for good. Obviously, the summer dormant orchids like Anacamptis papilionacea

Height:	30-45 cm (1-1.5 ft)
Flower Colors:	pink, purple
Flower Season:	mid spring

and Pterostylis nutans alba x stricta do much better with these...

Bellevalia longistyla

is also in flower and gets better from year to year, but the new stuff also shines, like the Anemone ranunculoides

Height:	10-20 cm (3.9-7.9 inch)
Flower Colors:	yellow
Flower Season:	mid spring
Life form:	deciduous rhizome

"aureus"-named double flowered clone (note the Anemone nemorosa

Height:	10-20 cm (3.9-7.9 inch)
Flower Colors:	white, pink, blue
Flower Season:	mid spring
Life form:	rhizome

"Blue eyes" in the background of the pleione - seems the doubles are all late in that family). Allium karataviense

Life form:

bulb

subsp. henrikii from Janis Rukšans (though obviously not the red globe) closes the parade - I'm new to these lower ball alliums, but I think I like this one...

[Arnold]

I believe I have a correction to make.

I've confused Tulipa atlatica and Tulipa ferganica.

See the two attached images to observe the difference.

T. ferganica is much more star shaped and blooms a bit later than T. atlatica.

They both have survived and thrive here in a Northeastern garden.  Summer rains and all.

The T. ferganica can have 1-2 blooms per stem and has a downy petal tip.

The T. altatica occurs with single blooms.

[David Pilling]

the Pleiones really suffered last hot summer

You'll have to construct something that keeps them cooler than ambient - sort of an anti-greenhouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW9_ztTiw8

That guy does not investigate what could be done with evaporating water - would be another option.

[Carlos]

Hi, it's being a terrible spring here (Spain), with record high temperatures every week and almost no rain in most of the country since mid February. The countryside in my area on Eastern Spain looks like it was August. Water restrictions, crop losses, etc. But we still have the sun, paella and sangría so politicians don't seem to worry, tourists will still come to roast on the beach.


Well, it was about April flowers. Narcissus are gone and Allium are beginning, in between come the Iris.

Iris filifolia



Iris xiphium (wild, Albacete province)



Iris sicula from Malta, this is true sicula and it seems that mesopotamica is the same, but the name was publushed later. Leaves dry up and disappear completely during the summer. I don't have to bend at all to pollinate them.



Iris sicula from the Algarve, Uli found it in a rather wild spot and I finally confirmed that it is sicula. I have since located it in Southern Spain, only in old houses and along cemetery walls so far. It seems that Muslims planted it in cemeteries as still do with albicans.



Iris tingitana, possibly the tallest xiphium



Iris tingitana, in the background albicans and purple albicans given by Rafa Díez. He says it is a reverted seedling. A glimpse of Iris bicapitata from the Gargano peninsula can be seen below on the left.



Iris albicans



Carlos

[Carlos]

Iris lutescens, dark purple clone



Iris paradoxa



Moraea sisyrinchium. Western plants (in which the type belongs) are different to plants found from Corfu to Turkey and Palestine, which lack the yellow patch and have the white area mottled with purple. In our plants the mottling is only inside or at the mouth of the falls, and 99% of times with the orange,-yellow spot and nectar guide.





Allium cyrilli from one of the rediscovered populations in Spain.



Allium melananthum, a stunning plant from arid areas in SE Spain. I could see it in the wild last March and check the unique, long-stalked bulblets (see March photos). The plants grow in pockets among calcareous rocks and I think the runners leave the bulbs far away from the mother plant, so they will not compete for room and water. One of my favourite Iberian Alliums.



Allium moly subsp. glaucescens. More text to come



Carlos

[David Pilling]

Iris sicula from Malta, this is true sicula and it seems that mesopotamica is the same,

Carlos - interesting post and lovely irises. I'm sorry the naming caught my eye. The WFO Plant list says

Iris sicula is a synonym of Iris pallida subsp. pallida

meanwhile

Iris mesopotamica is a synonym of Iris x Germanica (in other words a hybrid)

Looking on the PBS wiki and around the Google, seems like the usual trouble with names. I had no idea, I'm doubly sorry now. For raising the issue and wasting time looking it up.

[Carlos]

Hi, oh, yes, POWO again. It's great to discuss these subjects, though it's the third or fourth time for me in the last weeks.


POWO is not always right. It is wrong this time. I guess WFO is quoting POWO.

I have the plant from Malta, it's not pallida, which has silvery, papery bracts in anthesis and does not lose the leaves in the summer and is far more cold tolerant, and less vigorous. As other bearded irises from the coldereastern Mediterranean, it grows in spring and summer. I have been told by Zuzana Caspers, the head of Pruhonice garden in the Czech Republic that sicula is not hardy there, but pallida is.

I have been sent photos of mesopotamica from Palestine and Lebanon, and it is the same plant as in Malta, and it is not x germanica, which is a mostly sterile plant with 2n=44.


Sicula has 48 chromosomes, is fertile and gives seeds the size of a small chickpea, which germinate in the second autumn after ripening. I have seedlings.


Plants in Northern Lebanon



Plants in Palestine



Carlos

[Jan Jeddeloh]

Those species irises are a lot prettier than most of the hybrids.  Whether it's pallida or sicula it'a pretty thing.  I also like your picture of Iris xiphium.  Quite delicate.

Jan, who is off to the Czechia on Tuesday for the International Rock Garden Conference.

[Jan Jeddeloh]

Trillium albidum.

[Jan Jeddeloh]

My cross of Trillium albidum x kurabayashii

[Jan Jeddeloh]

Some kind of yellow erythronium.  I haven't been able to ID it with any certainty.  

[Jan Jeddeloh]

Erythronium "White Beauty"  

[Jan Jeddeloh]

You may have gathered by now that I like erythroniums and trilliums.  This is Erythronium revolutum with Trillium kurabayashii or chloropetalum (damned if I know the difference).  I love the trillium with the really dark leaves.

[David Pilling]

I have been sent photos of mesopotamica from Palestine and Lebanon, and it is the same plant as in Malta, and it is not x germanica, which is a mostly sterile plant with 2n=44.

Thanks. It looked like they'd dumped lots of irises in x germanica. Fancy all these irises growing in that troubled part of the world.

[Carlos]

Hi, Jan, you should ask to be shown pallida, you will check that it is not the same. 

Yes, David, everything goes to x germanica. You should download Maretta Colasante's book Iridaceae present in Italy (editricesapienza.it
https://www.editricesapienza.it › ...PDF
Iridaceae presenti in Italia Iridaceae Present in Italy), it's both in Italian and English, has the 'right' amount of technical / scientific information, and I thought it splitted too much, but after talking to Italian collectors it seems that it's true that there are several microendemisms in truly wild ground (sabina, setina, marsica, calabra...). They could have originated in cultivation in ancient times, but have survived in the wild (this is my thought, not Colasante's that I remember).

And also yes, plants are helpless towards human confrontations, they just grow where they grow. The war in Syria seems to be preserving their Oncocyclus. Now poachers are heading to Armenia and Georgia....

Carlos