Maryland update
Jane McGary (Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:19:30 PST)

Jim McKenney wrote about a few things he has in bloom, which prompts me to
comment on their behavior on the other side of the continent. After having
snow on the ground for two weeks, my place is now almost snow-free and
there was a warm day Saturday, which I spent working with the bulb frames
and cleaning up in the hope that visitors might make it out here this
winter to see the flowers. Yesterday was cooler but not pouring, so I
attacked a mess of dead (I hope) blackberries, old lumber, and overgrown
hollies back by the kennels, and plan to put in a group of large ornamental
grasses there. The weed grass will presumably blend in with them, and if
the blackberries resurge, I can use Crossbow on them without killing the
grasses. (Anti-chemical folks, don't bother to scold me, please; you don't
have the same problems, or very likely as much acreage.)

Jim mentioned Crocus chrysanthus 'Uschak Orange', a very bright one. It has
self-sown in one of my raised beds, presumably spread by ants because the
seedlings are so far apart. As for his Nerine foliage looking fine in the
frame, I gave up on Nerine last summer, since it never flowers here, and
put the plants out in the open in a raised bed. The leaves froze and turned
to mush, and I suspect the bulbs, though well mulched, are also goners.

As for Jim's report of erratic flowering time of Tecophilaea, it never
varies here: always in early March, with the leaves emerging barely before
flowering. Possibly in his climate, the bulbs are getting too much moisture
in summer? I have a lot of Tecophilaea seedlings coming on in the solarium,
but I always fear they will etiolate (elongate and become weak), even under
full glass as they are; this is a subalpine plant, and it seems to keep in
character best if grown without any heat.

The spring snowdrops here are in full bloom, but Eranthis has not emerged.
On the latter, last year a couple of us who were working on the order
filling of the NARGS seed exchange found that a large quantity of Eranthis
hyemalis seed was left over when we were packing up the seeds to send on
for the surplus distribution, so we took some home, not expecting this
purportedly ephemeral seed to germinate. To our surprise, it germinated
very well last month, having been planted last winter. I've always thought
it worth gambling on so-called ephemeral or short-lived seeds, particularly
in the Ranunculaceae, and have raised four species of Adonis to prove it.
It is a little tedious to raise perennial ranunculads (if I can coin that
word) from seed because they make only a pair of cotyledons the first year,
in most cases, and have to be cosseted for a few years, but once mature,
they tend to be long-lived.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA