On 4 Jun 2009, at 17:22, Jim McKenney wrote: > ...Allium caeruleum seems to require a dry summer under our conditions. It’s > one of the least expensive flowering onions, and one of the most ornamental, > yet I’ve never seen broad masses of it naturalized in local garden. ITYM "it become an exceptionally pestiferous weed." I keep trying to find a silver lining to a cloud labelled "Victoria has a good climate for summer-dry bulbs" but the fact is that some bulbs enjoy our conditions far too much. I'll single out three as particularly obnoxious: 1. Camassia, any species as far as I can tell. They set seed like it's going out of style, and every see that drops germinates to become a flowering bulb in five years or so. 2. Allium, any species, and allium cousins, aunts, and uncles. If they aren't seeding about, they're busying forming bulbils and bulblets above and below ground, and inserting themselves in place difficult to dig them out of. Fortunatly, they don't burrow as deep as camas do. Particularly obnoxious have been the allium cousin Nothoscordum inodorum, which I've been sedulously removing for a good ten years, and the commercial form of Allium roseum, which has the vice of setting bulbils instead of flowers above ground, and bulblets galore below ground. I have a suspicion that the plant sends out runners that form bulblets at the end, just to make eradication even more difficult. I'm not free of it yet and reading the entrails, suspect I never will be. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, if by the latter we mean freedom from Allium roseum. 3. Tulipa sprengeri. It's saving grace is that I like it, but it's gradually colonizing throughout my garden. PS: Arum dioscorides is flowering: as I sit here typing, I get wafts of its digusting smell off and on. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island http://maps.google.ca/maps/…