Two onion notes
totototo@telus.net (Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:08:41 PDT)
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