Tigridia
Mary Sue Ittner (Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:16:01 PDT)

Hi,

My experience with Tigridia has been similar to Mike Mace's. I can
germinate the seed, but it is not a permanent addition to my collection. I
grew some from seed and planted it out and it never returned the next year.
In pots protected in winter (in my greenhouse) I could keep it going
longer, but bloom was poor so the effort didn't seem worthwhile. I've had
similar results with Cypella species although some of them have held on a
bit longer. Flowers for most of these are so short lived that you need to
have them bloom over a period of time to get very excited about them. Even
if they have a gorgeous bloom, if it only happens once or twice for part of
a day, you need to be sure you are there at the time to see the flower. If
you are away or just didn't get around to doing a survey in the middle of
the day, you could miss the whole event. Kind of like some Moraea species
and Galaxia (now Moraea). The only species of the latter I've ever gotten
to flower I never saw in bloom more than a few hours in the yearly cycle.
Mike said the ones he grew rebloomed, but if mine did, I missed it.

Surprisingly, I had some Tigridia pavonia in my Stockton garden (central
California) planted in raised beds of perennials in clay soil where they
were watered in summer and got rained on in winter and they came back and
bloomed very nicely for years. And they were probably some form of Tigridia
pavonia purchased commercially, but that was more than 20 years ago.
Stockton gets less rain in winter than where I live now and definitely
warmer summer temperatures. Plus I water less here in summer. Most
perennials would never survive.

Mary Sue

Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers