Watsonia, was Watsonia in Oregon.
Mary Sue Ittner (Sun, 21 Aug 2005 22:02:56 PDT)

Dear All,

Don Mahoney talked about Watsonias in his Cal Hort talk and about how many
of them they had planted in Strybing (San Francisco Botanical Garden) in
San Francisco made new corms rapidly and not flowers. He thought the habit
of making corms, not flowers, made them easy to propagate and those were
the ones offered for sale. Eventually they removed the multipliers in the
garden and now only grow the ones that flower reliably. I was reminded that
Watsonia like Cyrtanthus has a reputation in South Africa for being a fire
lily. We were told that many years some species rarely bloomed and then
when a fire came along the whole hillside would be covered in bloom. I
don't think most of us want to burn our gardens to get them to bloom.

In my Northern California garden, Watsonia aletroides, W. humilis, and W.
marginata generally bloom every year. They are all planted in the ground
although I have grown W. humilis successfully in pots. W. coccinea and W.
laccata usually bloom. The former doesn't offset much at all. For years I
grew W. pillansii (W. beatricis.) It expanded greatly in my garden, but
only bloomed 2 times in about ten years so eventually I dug it out. It is a
summer rainfall species, evergreen in most gardens and it could have been
it didn't get enough water in summer.

Before this thread I just added some pictures of the Watsonias I grow and
ones from the Eastern Cape from Cameron McMaster to the wiki having noticed
that we didn't have many pictured there. I also added a picture of the
flower of that horrible Watsonia meriana that is taking over huge stretches
of areas of Northern California and replacing the native plants. It is the
one that produces bulbils in the flowering stalk. I found one in my garden
this spring in a spot I was sure I had cleaned out years ago. So before it
went to bulb heaven I photographed it. Bob suggested I not add it to the
wiki because it might encourage people to grow it.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Speaking of weedy bulbs, this has been an exceptionally good year for
Crocosmia in the wild. The last few years when the rains stopped early you
didn't see so many, but having rains late into June was just enough to
stimulate the ones that were waiting for the right year to bloom so you see
them in drainage ditches all over the place.

Mary Sue