Bulb Lecture
Robert Hamilton (Sat, 08 Nov 2003 02:06:00 PST)

Hi all,

I was fortunate to be able to travel to Melbourne earlier this week
to attend the Alpine Garden Society , Victorian Group 2003 lecture.

During registration the plant trade table was a very popular area.

The speakers were Mat Murray who is a Senior Horticulturalist ,
Rock Garden, Mount Tomah annex, Sydney Botanical Gardens and Tony
Hall , Manager of the Alpine Unit at Kew Gardens.

Mat spoke of his trip to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco . This
is a harsh environment where the summers are very hot and dry
by day but very cold overnight. He was looking for plants which
may suit the Mount Tomah Rock Garden which gets similarly hot
and dry in summer. This is the home of garden favourite
Narcissus bulbocodium but surprisingly Mat found that it often
grew in niches where some moisture was retained and has
subsequently found in culture that it flowers better in Sydney
after some moisture during summer dormancy.

The slides of the alpine landscapes were amazing and Mat's
snippets of Moroccan culture made a very entertaining
presentation.

Tony presented an A to Z of rare bulbous plants he has
cultivated at Kew. We saw about 120 rare species of which
about one quarter were of his favourite genus Iris , especially
the Junos. I have much enjoyed an article by Tony on Juno
cultivation, in the AGS special bulb issue in 1998, so to hear
more of these amazing bulbs was the driving force for me to cross
Bass Straight.

Most of the bulbs he mentioned were grown in the Alpine House
at Kew to protect them from the extremes of environment
especially excess moisture. Some of the taxa he showed us
represented the only known representatives in cultivation and sadly
one or two of these have been lost to cultivation. There were
too many rarities to mention them all but I must mention a few
which have remained in my memory.

My favourites included Lilium catesbaei (SE USA), Trillidium
govanianum ( W Himalayas) , natural hybrid Colchicum kesselringii x
luteum (Tadjikistan - kicking myself I didn't order it from the
last Archibald list) , Galanthus trojanus (NW Turkey) ,
Crocus moabiticus (Jordon - an RIP plant), the Juno Iris - I
could list 20 or so, Stenomesson aurantiaca (Ecuador, Peru ),
Roscoea purpurea "Red Gurkha (Nepal) ,Amorphophallus kiusianus ( Japan
, Taiwan , SE China - a hardy one ) and the newly described
Biarum ditschianum (SW Turkey - just a hairy spadix appendix
poking out of the ground.)

Tony was a very entertaining and humerous speaker . Some of his
descriptions of the smell of plants were very funny - "wet
doggy " was a common one , others are perhaps best not
mentioned , although Tony was able to get away with them.

Around 200 people thoroughly enjoyed this evening which was
rounded off by a delicious selection of edible goodies from
Patterson's Cakes workplace of Pastrycook and legendary bulb
grower Otto Fauser.

Cheers,

Rob in Tasmania