A mystery solved, sort of - Sternbergia colchiciflora
totototo@telus.net (Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:33:19 PST)
On 2 Feb 07, at 22:34, Brian Whyer wrote:
Brian wrote about bulbs flowering down in the ground:
Try to flower on "very" short stems if they are kept
too dry over winter, presumably they have not formed a proper root
system and cannot get enough water.
I wonder if something like this is going on with one particular bulb
of Fritillaria eduardii I have. Even though it's planted right with
3 or 4 sibling bulbs, this one always tries to flower a month
earlier than the others and doesn't emerge properly. Maybe it has
some genetic error that lowers its vigor, but it doesn't die because
of being coddled in
cultivation?
I have had F. raddeana do this, flowering OK the first year then
dwarfed for the following 2 years before saying goodbye. One of the
AGS frit group members told me they received snow melt before
flowering, and then occasional storms, so should not be kept too dry
at any time. Probably why mine gave up in pots.
The two high-altitude western erythroniums, E. grandiflorum and E. montanum,
suffer from the same problem, failure of the flowering scape to properly
elongate in near sea level gardens. Near Victoria, there are relatively low-
altitude populations of both, E. montanum on the San Juan Ridge west of Jordan
River, E. grandiflorum on Mt. Prevost NW of Duncan BC. Both abt. 2000' altitude.
The E. grandiflorum population goes totally dry in the summer, but it is on the
steeply sloping north face of that small mountain. The E. montanum population
is moister in the summer, but it too is on the north face of the EW-trending
ridge.
Somewhere I've gotten the idea that the problem isn't lack of moisture so much
as lack of sufficient winter chilling. Some, perhaps all, western erythroniums
require winter chilling for their seeds to germinate; sow freshly gathered seed
of E. oregonum or E. revolutum in the summer and it will come up the next
spring. Sow it later on in the fall and there's a good chance germination will
be delayed a year.
Which suggests that if you get another specimen of F. raddeana, try putting it
in the refrigerator early in the fall and leaving it there for the winter.
Spousal complaints "why is the refrigerator full of plants in pots???" can be
dealt with by blaming me or the PBS-list or anyone else handy who's willing to
take the rap.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate
on beautiful Vancouver Island