Favorite Blue Flower Bulbs--TOW
Jane McGary (Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:42:43 PST)
I don't recognize Mary Sue's "Delphinium non menziesii" but I do know that
when this name appears in seed exchange lists, it is suspect. The real D.
menziesii is difficult to grow at low elevations. It inhabits cliffs and
screes, mostly, at elevations above the winter snow line. It seems to be
short-lived even in the wild, reproducing by seed. The flower color is more
violet than true blue.
When I was cataloging the NARGS seed exchange list for 3 years in the
mid-1990s, I was sometimes surprised to receive copious donations of
garden-collected seed of species I knew to be challenging. Sometimes these
were the true plants, being grown in particularly suitable climates (e.g.,
high alpines in places with continuous winter snow cover), but sometimes
they turned out to be impostors that had been passed around for years under
a "choice" name. A warning to verify the identity of your plants (even if
you bought them from a nursery of good repute) before passing them on.
Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA
At 10:28 AM 11/19/2004 -0800, you wrote:
On Nov 18, 2004, at 6:20 PM, Mary Sue Ittner wrote:
I nominated Delphinium for purple favorites and there are a couple of
native ones, D. decorum and D. paryii that are almost blue or part blue
that I really like. Also there is one that is really a gorgeous color of
blue that I received from NARGS seed as D. menziesii, which it is not. I
don't know what it really is, but I decided to add it again as a sp. to
the wiki, along with a picture of the roots, tuber? when dormant.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
This is the one I got at a local nursery a few years ago! I didn't know it
was geophytic. But it was so true blue I had to get it. I thought it was
some commercial hybrid of some sort. Mine was short and became covered in
these flowers--there was no flower "spike".
--Lee Poulsen