New on Wiki--more Moraeas and Aristea
Mary Sue Ittner (Sun, 03 Apr 2005 22:18:17 PDT)

Dear All,

I finished adding more of Bob Werra's Moraea pictures to the wiki. I still
have a number of native Fritillaria pictures, some Gladiolus, and some
Romulea pictures of his to do.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

New pictures are of Moraea neopavonia (considered now to be M. tulbaghensis
and quite striking), Moraea papilionacea, and a picture of Moraea
tripetala. I can't believe how many weeks and blooms I got from the latter
this year. I'm not sure whether it was our long dry warm spell, but
something was to their liking. We had pictures on the wiki, but his picture
give an idea of the plants, not just the flower and there were a lot
blooming the same day. I also added a picture of my plants blooming one day
recently just as it started to rain.

I have added a couple of pictures of my second winter rainfall Aristea to
bloom from seed, Aristea spiralis. It didn't stay in bloom very long, but
it was very pretty and a nice shade of blue and I was thrilled when I saw
the spike forming. I've had dismal luck growing Aristea from seed, which
still seems surprising since A. ecklonii can reseed about in the garden. I
now have a few plants of a number of species so am keeping my fingers
crossed. I heard from Martin Grantham after writing our group before about
my lack of success with seeds. We both had better luck with our own seed
started in the fall after we harvesting our seed so fresh seed may be a
help. My other plant which bloomed last spring took a long time for the
seed to ripen so I didn't store it very long before it was time to plant
it. John Ingram once reported better luck with spring planting and I wonder
if that would have been because seed from the southern hemisphere could
have been fresh.

Martin was using GA3 in combination with a pure smoke concentrate sold by
Kings Park BG in Australia which helped a bit and keeping his plants
covered with plastic until they germinated. He was growing quite a few
species. Maybe if he sees this message he will tell us if he has gotten his
to bloom. Some of my seed pots that had zero germination the first year
(planted in fall) had a couple of seeds germinate the second winter or
spring. They are very tiny so still in the risky stage. There was really no
difference between the pots I used the smoke packets I got from Silverhill
versus those I did not. My plants seemed much happier once they got
transplanted in the ground so I plan to do that with the others if they
ever get big enough.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue