Pacific coast bulbs deer don't favour?
Mary Sue Ittner (Sat, 21 May 2005 07:10:12 PDT)

Hi,

One wonders when seeing bulbs blooming in the wild why the deer haven't
eaten them when they will eat them in most gardens even when as Jane points
out there are a lot of other food possibilities. The ones growing on cliffs
seem to get an obvious pass and growing through shrubs that might make them
less accessible. But there are others that seem really easy to reach you
sometimes see. Maybe it is the nutritional aspect of garden plants
(fertilized, watered).

A lot of public gardens I'm familiar with eventually resort to deer
fencing. How about Zigadenus? It's supposed to be poisonous and I can't
remember it getting eaten by deer. Z. fremontii is having a great year in
the wild and in my garden with all the late rain this year. It is a very
attractive plant. The local timber company cleared a portion of land
alongside the road and near their office a year or so ago. It looked
terrible at the time and we wondered why as usually they do that kind of
work where the public can't easily see it and leave buffers along the road.
We speculated that they were creating a fire break. This year there are
hundreds of Zigadenus growing in that spot surrounded by French broom. They
must have been there all the time, but it just got too shady for them to
bloom well. The deer seem to be leaving them alone.

Mary Sue