Pseudogaltonia clavata (and blooming from seed)
Mary Sue Ittner (Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:53:42 PDT)

My husband and I were lucky enough to be taken by David Victor to see
Harry Hay and his extensive garden in 2004. In bloom for the first
time from seed sown 21 years earlier was this species. It was very
striking, but that's a very long time to wait.

You have to be impressed however with the optimism of the people who
grow things like this from seed. There are pictures of Harry's plants
on the wiki page and a photo of the bulb from Jacob.
<http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>
Harry lives in the UK which I would think would be very different
from Namibia so perhaps if you lived in the right place the time from
seed to bloom would be shorter. I've often wondered if it bloomed
again for Harry. I've found with some of the plants I have grown from
seed from South Africa that their best flowering ever is the first
time they bloom from seed. Some things once they start blooming
continue to bloom each year and others bloom erratically after that
or dwindle away. It could just be my lack of skill or perhaps once
they bloom they feel they have done what they needed to do. I believe
Will Ashburner from Australia who some of you may remember from long
ago IBS days made the same observation when he was keeping good
records of what he grew.

I remember also Tony Palmer from New Zealand complaining that
Lapeirousia corymbosa often did not come up. Seed I got from
Silverhill germinated so well that I gave a lot of the little ones
away. It came up reliably until the year it bloomed (and bloomed
really well) and since then it often stays below ground. This past
year I had one flower from a corm that found its way into another
pot, but none from several other pots of this species. I finally got
Lapeirousia oreogena to bloom from Bill Dijk's seed (from his US
trip) last year after wanting it for so long and I'm hoping it won't
be a one time event.

Mary Sue

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