Added to the wiki
Mary Sue Ittner (Thu, 18 Aug 2005 09:13:40 PDT)

Hi,

I raved earlier about the Begonia boliviensis which has been brightening
our summer fog. I added a picture of the attractive seed pod to the wiki.
Ernie told me this species could tolerate our Pacific northwest winter wet
even when dormant.

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

Yesterday the UPS man was lingering looking at the tuberous begonia making
an amazing display in my lath house. He thought it was so beautiful. This
was in the packet at the IBS meeting in Pasadena a number of years ago.
It's my sole survivor from my packet, but I agree it is really beautiful.
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens has a wonderful display of tuberous
begonias every year. Is there any interest in seeing any of these on the wiki?

I also got around to adding pictures of Bloomeria humilis which bloomed in
June. This is a rare Bloomeria I obtained from Telos. It is shorter than
the more commonly grown one, but I found it delightful and added three
pictures showing it in the beginning, one week later, and about a month
from the first pictures. I'm going to keep it in a pot to make sure I don't
lose it, but it looks like it could be an attractive rock garden plant. I'm
a fan of yellow however and don't live in a hot summer climate. I remember
when we discussed our favorite yellow plants that a lot of you don't like
yellow. I'd be adding this one if we were discussing it now. I'll try it in
the ground when I have extras and can experiment.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Finally blooming last week was Romulea macowanii. This is a summer rainfall
species. This was my second try to grow it from Nargs seed. The first
insisted on growing in the winter even though I kept watering it in the
summer and turned out to be pink and probably Romulea rosea. This second
one seems to be the real thing with yellow flowers without a stalk. It was
supposed to be var. alticola, but I couldn't see the bracts to tell and for
that matter found it hard to measure the length of the tube either of
something sitting on the ground. Goldblatt and Manning don't really
recognize the varieties and subspecies of these African Romuleas so I
decided it was safe to stick with the species name.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue