Bellevalia--TOW
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 07 Apr 2004 08:06:56 PDT)

Dear All,

I really love blue flowers so am always looking for plants that have them.
I only grow three Bellevalias. The first one I ever got was B. romana. I
got seed from my friend Will Ashburner who called it "a good doer". He
later forgot he told me that and questioned why I had wanted it. When I
reminded him, he agreed that it was true. The flowers are white, becoming
brown as they age and it is really easy to grow, but not very spectacular.
We took a picture of it last year, but didn't get a very good one and I
didn't realize I needed to get a better one this year for the wiki and now
it is mostly past it. I sowed two, actually 3 batches of seed in the fall
and it germinated in 1 to 2 months. Seed sowed September, October 1999
bloomed in spring of 2003.
I had three batches of seed because one was seed exchange seed that was
supposed to be something else.

I started seed Jack Elliott gave me of B. dubia the fall of 2000 and it
came up that winter and bloomed last spring for the first time too. It is
quite unique with the pretty blue buds and brown flowers.

That same year I got seed of what was supposed to be B. forniculata. I say
supposed to be because it was seed from the Scottish Rock Garden. I was
only a member briefly of that group. It delivers seed very quickly and
efficiently, but a large percentage of what I got was misnamed when it
finally bloomed so it would need to be verified. My sample was small so it
is not a fair indictment, but just made me careful to check out each plant.
This one hasn't bloomed yet so I'm not sure what it is. That seed I sowed
in fall didn't come up until spring. It has not done as well as the others.

I really wanted it after Jack Elliott wrote the following to the old IBS
forum about Bellevalia:

"They are very little grown here, probably because many of them have rather
unattractive straw-coloured to brownish flowers in a looser spike than
muscaris, but there are exceptions.
B. dubia is about the only one I have now, the lower flowers of the very
loose spike being the typical colour but the upper flowers brilliant blue,
very worth-while. B. forniculata is amazing. We saw it in Turkey in very
wet meadows, which looked vivid sky blue from a mile away from millions of
the bellevalias. The meadows would have dried out later and I should say
they all have a hot dry summer and a very cold winter under snow. The other
popular ones are B. pycnantha and B. forniculata, closely allied or the
same, with much denser spikes of extremely dark navy blue flowers. They
really only differ from muscaris in having the 'mouths' of the bells open
rather than incurved."

Having just read that again, I suspect that the second mention of B.
forniculata probably should have been a different species, probably B.
pycnantha. Perhaps my possible B. forniculata needs colder winters than I
can provide. The other two are just fine in my Mediterranean climate. I try
to remember to give them occasional water in summer, but haven't always
been good about that either. B. dubia bloomed this year when we were having
an unusual heat spring heat spell and didn't last nearly as long as last
year. It has bloomed in February and March so can be appreciated when it
has less competition.

Any one else grow this genus and willing to share your experiences?

Mary Sue