> I was amused at Brian Whyer's comments about killing the Alliums. On my > hike Thursday we passed a small patch of Allium unifolium. Where I live it > is almost always found in very wet spots where it can be quite numerous, > but you don't see it expanding to other areas. In fact it barely grows and > doesn't expand in my much dryer garden when I plant it in the ground. I > once asked Jim Robinett why some of these California Alliums known for > there expansive qualities like Allium hyalinum which doubles for me in pots > and never does anything in the ground don't do better for me in the ground. > He speculated that they weren't getting water long enough, but who knows. > On the other hand Allium triquetrum is an ever expanding pest in coastal > northern California. I notice it these days up and down the road on Highway > One. I'm not sure anyone has tried to kill it. Where I live people frown on > using herbicides to kill the weedy things so mostly Cal Trans (the highway > folks) just mows. Perhaps I should say that in my dry chalky garden the few allium unifolium are slowly declining. The invaded garden, where I introduced them, is a heavy clay soil wet in winter, but now just starting to crack up after a month with no rain. Both triquetrum and unifolium have seeded in many hundreds, and in the latter case in a bed where I worked manually through the soil only 2 years ago to clean it they are now back and very healthy sized, probably from small bulbs I missed. Snowdrops, camassia leichtliniii, leucojum aestivum, erythronium pagoda and dens canis, fritillaria imperialis, the larger allium hybrids, and colchicum hybrids all grow well there. Some of the local woods around here are beginning to change from green to blue with sheets of bluebells (English), another invasive plant when it gets into the garden, even in my dry soil. A national survey of the Spanish and English bluebells is commencing as the former is suspected of interbreeding and dominating the local race. Note the bluebells of Scotland, from the song, are campanula rotundifolia. Brian Whyer, zone 8'ish, Buckinghamshire, UK