Muscari Cultivar Questions
Jane McGary (Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:29:12 PDT)

The John Scheepers catalog lists a Muscari mixture including
armeniacum, "botryoides album" hort., latifolium, and 'Valerie
Finnis'. I don't know if this is the same mixture as Joseph asked
about. Probably the sellers just put in M. armeniacum and whatever
else is available in quantity, and add a few 'Valerie' (which is more
expensive because it doesn't increase so well).

The commonly available selections of M. armeniacum are the species
itself, the double 'Blue Spike', the greenish 'Saffier', and a white
form whose name I forget. There are some bicolored cultivars,
ascribed to M. aucheri, that are more expensive and quite pretty,
such as 'Mount Hood'. The catalog before me offers "Muscari
paradoxum" which it claims is "syn. Bellevalia pycnantha," which is
nonsense; the offered plant is clearly nothing like the true
Bellevalia pycnantha, but is rather a dark, very aggressively
multiplying Muscari species or hybrid.

'Valerie Finnis' is apparently a hybrid. It is definitely not M.
neglectum! It arose in the garden of its eponym. Its color and slow
increase suggest to me that Muscari pseudomuscari (syn. Pseudomuscari
chalusicum) might be involved in its pedigree. That species is very
attractive but I have been able to increase it only from seed; it has
very large bulbs that rarely if ever multiply.

Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA

05:33 PM 9/19/2012, you wrote: