Lapeirousia oreogena

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:00:44 PST
Hi,

When I looked at Ken's pictures that Lapeirousia oreogena caught my 
attention right away. I've been wanting to grow it since I saw Bill 
Dijk's pictures of it and saw it in the wild in South Africa. On this 
list I have said before that since I can successfully grow so many 
bulbs, that I have decided to content myself with accepting that 
there are some things I won't be success growing and that it will be 
far less frustrating to concentrate on those I can grow. This is 
especially true since I have too many pots and am trying to reduce 
the numbers. Since we are once again having a very wet year I'm 
experiencing a lot more disease in my pots this year so nature may 
help me with the limits this year.

I have little luck growing any kind of Lapeirousia. I have gotten 
seeds to germinate, but I rarely see them in future years although 
the corms are there sometimes. I've had a couple bloom once for me 
(as in one corm out of a lot.) The one exception is Lapeirousia 
corymbosa which bloomed well the first year it bloomed from seed and 
after that only a few usually show up. Last year was another good 
year for it and this year there is only one up in two pots of a lot 
of corms. Perhaps they too need to reside permanently in the 
greenhouse, but if so something else has to go.

My first two tries growing L. oreogena from seed weren't very 
successful and then Bill Dijk shared some more seed  and quite a few 
of them germinated. These have been coming up in subsequent years and 
this year the leaves looked more like they are supposed to look so I 
was very excited. When I got back from South Africa I could see I was 
finally going to see it in bloom. So I brought my pot inside so I 
could enjoy it and protect it from the humidity of the every day rain 
we were having at the time. If this is going to be the only year it 
blooms, I wanted to fully appreciate it!!! I've added some pictures 
to the wiki today so the rest of you can see it too. The leaves are 
totally cool and the flowers amazing and the long tube tells you 
something about the pollinator.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue


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