Aristea in bloom
Mary Sue Ittner (Sat, 05 Jun 2004 07:43:04 PDT)

Dear All,

I have written before about my lack of success getting winter rainfall
Aristea seed to germinate and keep on growing (if it does germinate.) It is
surprising since the summer rainfall one that is in so many gardens is such
a weed and grows so easily. My experiments this past fall weren't very
successful either, although I ended up with three plants from 10 or 12 seed
pots. That's a really poor showing since I planted quite a few seeds in
each pot. Still, I had one pot of Aristea spiralis from the year before
germinate this winter so maybe next year some more will show up.

Aristea bakeri (syn. confusa) is blooming in my garden right now. I'm not
even sure I started it as my friend Jana and I (we both like blue flowers)
have both been trying to get these to grow and since I can't find it in my
seed germination data base perhaps she got her seeds to come up and shared
a couple with me. All I know is that I had three that were seedlings in the
fall of 2001 which probably means they came up earlier that year. I lost
one last year, planted one out early fall of 2003 and when it seemed much
happier in the ground than the one in a container planted the second one to
take advantage of our winter rains. So far they are both doing well, but
only the first one I planted in the ground is blooming. I am so thrilled.
I've added pictures to the wiki.

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue