Blooming Now and more

Jim McKenney really likes to stimulate conversation on this list (or shall
I say stir things up)!! As I emerge from my repotting to read posts it
seems obvious to me that we all are going to have different favorites and
that is good. If everyone grew the same thing, gardens would be really
boring. Since the members of this list have widely different conditions:
winter rainfall, summer rainfall, different soils, different day and night
temperatures year round as starters of course we will have different levels
of success and as a result different favorites. One of the reasons I have
been doing topics of the week on favorite colored plants was to show the
great diversity of this list. Each color we have done has produced many
different favorites.

Blooming this month for me from two different batches of misidentified
NARGS seed (both identified as different species of Rhodophiala--not) is
Habranthus tubispathus. I had given away all the plants I had of that
species, concluding that a bulb that needed hot humid summers with rainfall
to stimulate the blooms was not a good choice for coastal Northern
California. A few days of bloom a year was not going to justify the summer
water it would want. I am sure it must be someone's favorite where it
blooms off and on in mass all summer. It's disappointing to me however to
have it once again. Even the planting out trick didn't work with these.
They just disappeared never to be seen again.

On the other hand, I have the first bloom from seed of the most gorgeous
big flowered orange Cyrtanthus, C. sanguineus. I started it from Silverhill
Seed October 4, 2001 after seeing some I greatly admired at Lauw's in
France and thinking if he grew it I might be able to grow it too. I think
Jim Waddick has given it a thumbs up too. In this case we are both
successful even though we have very different growing conditions. No doubt
his plants are protected in winter. Also blooming as of yesterday is
another Cyrtanthus, this one from Bill Dijk seed started May 2002,
Cyrtanthus eucallus hybrids. Paul Chapman was with me when I was looking at
what Bill Dijk had brought to sell in Pasadena when he visited the USA and
said he thought I could be successful with Cyrtanthus eucallus. It isn't as
dramatic as the other one, but still is very beautiful. I'm not sure how
Bill Dijk manages to get so many blooming flowers at once. Mine are
staggered which is fine since that means they bloom for a long time. My
Cyrtanthus montanus-elatus hybrid has also been blooming a long time and
yesterday I spotted a white C. mackenii. All are bring me a lot of pleasure!!

Bill has so many pictures of Cyrtanthus on the wiki I'm not sure I need to
add any of mine, but have added a close-up of C. sanguineus showing the
nice markings in the throat. I also added a couple of pictures taken a few
months ago of Cyrtanthus mackenii when it was blooming then too.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

I've also added some pictures of the C. eucallus hybrid. Bill's all look
orange and mine is more of a salmon color. I positioned it next to one of
those white "big showy baffons (sic)" with the cheap flash now gracing my
garden for a second photo. It does indeed look a bit small in comparison.
Lycoris success is unlikely where I live and Amaryllis belladonna hit or
miss even though the species is naturalized in the wild where I live, but
when it hits, I enjoy it.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue