Sept. photos

[Diane Whitehead]

I don't remember when I planted the first bulbs of this fall-blooming colchicum, but each bulb has multiplied into a clump of about 15 flowers.  The stems?  tubes?  are  23 cm long (about 9 inches).

[Carlos]

I dowloaded it one or two years ago, I will look for it. Please give me an email address.

Carlos

[Carlos]

Hi, I now remembered that my Prospero from Turkey is the plant sometimes referred to as 'Paul's titan' (Paul Christian, rareplants) as it reaches 50 tall, with bulbs more than double in size as those of 'normal' Prospero autumnale, and is offseting, a unique feature in the genus.Michael Neumann also talks about it in the PBSWiki https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Prospero

I have no doubt that it is an undescribed species.

[Wylie]

I was surprised to see some Crinums blooming again. They had flowered in May, and probably due to the increasing summer rain the Azores has been getting, they are now reblooming.

[Judy Glattstein]

Colchicum actually make a very good cut flower

[gastil]

First time repotting in years. Some notes. The Scilla madeirensis grown from PBS seed. This is its second potting-up. I noticed the leaves lasted well into early summer. Now I see the roots are fleshy even in late September. The bulb is purple (sorry about focus). My tag says "harvested 5/15/19 RdeV 2 seeds per pot sown 11/18." I guess that's November 18 of 2019 I sowed the seed. The 4 year old bulb is about 2 inches diameter. I would try to get a better photo but they are all up-potted now already. 

I harvested some Dichelostemma capitata from bulb boxes where they had been crowding out smaller bulbs and were infested with Nothoscordum gracile. The flowering-sized corms I replanted in the front yard where they can spread their long, fat leaves with abandon and not crowd out anything special. I noticed the largest sized corms often have a hole, like an asymmetrical donut. I believe this is where last year's flower stalk was. Originally from Telos, these grow vigorously and put on a show of  tall wavy purple pom poms that attract bees. 

A pot of bulbs I've had for years bloomed for the first time this August. I looked at the wiki and clearly what I've got is not what my label says. Looks like I've got a self-sown invader from accidental seed-scattering. Habranthus robustus would be my first guess. I'll use a photo of the August blooms. Those already set seed. I noticed the 2nd to last one set seed too although it had no siblings to cross-pollenate. 

Blooming now are the first of the Oxalis and the first of the Nerine filifolia.   

Also blooming now are my white Amaryllis hybrids. Those are having their best year ever. I just noticed that this early-blooming Oxalis (I've lost its tag) is also now blooming just as vigorously in the sand box where it sat a few years back, in a corner not seen until I cleaned up that box. The other early-blooming Oxalis just opened yesterday: Oxalis livida. 

I have not verified any of those species names' accuracy nor spelling. I'm sure at least one is out of date. 

[Martin Bohnet]

Colchicum actually make a very good cut flower

How? wouldn't you cut right through the tube??

@gastil better rely on the forum software to shrink the images - we're not so low on storage that we need to trade stamps

Most of the day went into sorting EX07 (it just wasn't possible to get through it during a bad week at work), and most of the packages will be on the road tomorrow, but I had to take a breath from time to time:

Crocus time has started: Crocus kotschyanus

and a nice big white one I'm not really sure about, followed by Crocus banaticus

with some slug damage and the Hybrid "Autumn Fantasy".

But it's not all crocus: There's also Nerine masoniorum

and Zingiber mioga

Height:	45-80 cm (1.5-2.6 ft)
Flower Colors:	yellow, pink
Flower Season:	early autumn to mid autumn
Life form:	deciduous rhizome
Climate:	USDA Zone 7-10

- of the latter one I sometimes miss the flower period, but this time there were a few pretty exposed specimen to shoot...

[Judy Glattstein]

Martin, just cut close to ground. Unlike crocus the colchicum don't fall apart.

[MarkMazer]

"  Is there some herb or something I can grow"

Try chrysanthemums. They are easy to find this time of year here.

Mark Mazer
Hertford, NC

[Carlos]

Hi, Gastil, yes, Autonöe madeirensis grows in shady places and it seems to keep growing well into the summer. The temperature difference between summer and winter is faded by effect of the ocean, and this seems to have been set into the 'biological clock' of the plant.

They are robust plants which can make bulbs the size of a small plum in their first year if you keep watering until it's just too hot. I discovered this by neglecting the plugs.And the fleshy roots, similar to those of Oncostema (S. peruviana group), also surprised me. It has many traits which show that it is not a real Scilla  including fleshy, berry-like capsules, if I recall correctly.

I have just sown its Canarian relative, A latifolia, I hope it does only half as well. I had to sell many extra bulbs of madeirensis and still repotted a fozen or so..

Carlos

[Carlos]

More Prospero...

A white form from Zakynthos (Zante,) island, Greece





Prospero corsicum, Corsica and Sardinia
 Perhaps the tiniest Prospero.



And the first Narcissus × perezlarae (cavanillesii × deficiens)



Carlos

[Arnold]

Cyclamen hederafolium
Colchicum spp.

[gastil]

I'm interpreting the forum topic 'current photographs' as not just blooms. September here sees few blooms, just a frenzy of procrastinated repotting. With today's drizzle, pots not under cover are now officially going to wait yet another year in their old soil.

Yesterday's work included Wurmbea stricta and Babiana rubrocyanea. The latter grew four years in their two tiny seed pots, 4 seeds each, producing four big corms each with several offsets growing higher on the stems. The big corms wriggled their way down through the tiny drainage slats and into the sand of their mini-plunge baskets. The seeds came from PBS SX 11-312 donated by Dee Foster in 2019. These Babiana seedlings begin to senesce late April but retain some green in their leaves longer, depending on weather. 

My Wurmbea came to me as 2 bulbs donated by Lynn Makela of Florida in 2012 for PBS BX 308 item 26. My accession record tells me that BX was in April and I waited until that fall to pot them. Here these bloom in February and seed ripens late April. These bloomed reliably in that same plastic pot, tucked into a larger flowerpot where they got more water than most of my collection. I re-potted in May 2020, according to my records. Curiously, I actually repotted something before the last day possible. Oh, right, that was lockdown and I was zooming work while, below camera level, I was repotting.   In the bloom pic from February notice the tiny insect, maybe an ant, in the middle flower.

Thank you @Carlos for the Autonöe madeirensis name update for my Scilla madeirensis. 
Thank you @Martin Bohnet for the LOL. No postage-stamp-sized pics today. 

[Carlos]

Amazing! I wonder if you would like to swap some seeds of Wurmbea if you get some.

Carlos

[gastil]

Alas, dear @Carlos and PBS friends, although I do often collect, store and label seed from that and other species, I do not ever seem to find the time to CLEAN and mail all that seed. 

I did just now locate the envelope of Wurmbea seed I collected May 2023. I now state my noble intention of actually getting that to Jan for her next SX. Those who know me will not bet good odds of that actually happening. 

Perhaps I should post pics of the years-worth of envelopes, bags, boxes, shelves and nearly every horizontal surface in this house where I have piled seed collected but not cleaned nor mailed. No need to rename this forum topic as 'Seed Hoarders Anonymous' since, technically, those would be photos taken in September.  Here's a photo of just the envelopes that sit in a shoe box near my keyboard. 

The seed-cleaning is not the only the bottleneck. Rodney from SIGNA has kindly offered each year that I could send him un-cleaned collections which he volunteers to clean for their seed exchange. But, alas, getting stuff into the mail seems to be above my current capabilities. Sigh. I might try this year. I know Jan's deadline is Oct 15 and I travel the 11th, so I'll aim to get these in the mail before then.