Camassia
totototo@telus.net (Wed, 07 May 2008 12:17:21 PDT)

On 7 May 08, at 9:36, Diana Chapman wrote:

I once saw a "pink" Camassia in local park, but the hour was late,
the sun low, and the light reddening, so just HOW pink it was, I do
not know. It could have been either C. leichtlinii subsp. suksdorfii
(the common large blue-violet camas found in the Puget Sound &
Georgia Strait region) or C. quamash, the smaller one.

If this "pink" camas I saw (or perhaps hallucinated) really was a
pink, I suspect it was a rather dirty color. Camas seems to have two
pigments which in combination give the deep violet common form, a
blue and a dirty pink.

Oddly enough, white- and pale blue-flowered forms are fairly common
if you sniff around odd corners of the city, but heaven help you if
you are so foolish as to bring these into your garden: they have the
same propensity for abandoned self-sowing that Hyacinthoides does.

And, worse, the bulbs go down to China and are very difficult (sc.
impossible) to eradicate once established.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate

on beautiful Vancouver Island