Early-flowering Fritillaria species and their hardiness

What a list of early blooming Fritillaria.... when I think I have been trying lots in my garden in southern Catalunya/ Spain , zone 9, 120 m above sea level, dry med. climate (450 mm rain) with a problematic dry and windy gap between rains in autumn and rains in Spring.

I am preparing a list of all the bulbs I experimented here, in alphabetical order. I have just passed letter F, anh had to confess I was very disappointed with them, but as you can imagine I would be ready to try again and again. I have got Fritillaria biflora from one BX, they grow well , in pot for the moment, and I also would like to try some more californian species, if possible to see if they stand better the climate we have here.

So, may I ask you, according to your long experience with Fritillarias, in this case, which one I could or should try here.

Fritillaria imperialis of course, but aso F. persica, F. raddeana, etc ..failed here, for example.
Fritillarias are not moutain plants , do they all need cold ( we had no frost this year, for example ) or constant humidity when growing?

By chance, I am at letter H in my list , I have gorgeous Hesperantha vaginata blooming these days and lots of other bulbous plants do well here in open air

Kind regards and thanks in advance

Guy L'Eplattenier

Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 13:01:22 -0800
To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
From: janemcgary@earthlink.net
Subject: [pbs] Early-flowering Fritillaria species and their hardiness

A walk through the bulb house this morning was enlivened by the first
opening flowers of a number of Fritillaria species. Most of them are
on the "dry" side, plants from semi-arid Asian and eastern
Mediterranean regions. They include the following:
Fritillaria raddeana
Fritillaria zagrica
Fritillaria eduardii
Fritillaria bucharica
Fritillaria obliqua
Fritillaria gibbosa
Fritillaria stenanthera (three forms)
Fritillaria striata
Fritillaria chitralensis
Fritillaria arriana
Fritillaria euboica
Fritillaria serpentinicola
Fritillaria sewertzowii
Fritillaria latifolia
Fritillaria caucasica

Well represented is the section named for the familiar Fritillaria
imperialis (not in flower here yet): raddeana, eduardii, and
chitralensis. The Rhinopetalum section also tends to be early, with
gibbosa, arriana, stenanthera, and bucharica. F. euboica and F.
serpentinicola are Greek species sometimes included in Fritillaria
carica, which is just in bud here. The earliest American species as
always is F. striata from the mountains of southern California. I
grew all these plants from seed, beginning with F. raddeana in 1988
(the original bulbs are still flowering, along with their seedlings).

We have had two spells of severe frost lasting about a week each, one
in early December and one in early February when some of these plants
had emerging foliage; F. striata had leaves up during the December
freeze, when the temperature dropped one night to 17 F here. F.
obliqua, native to the area of Athens, was in bud during the February
freeze down to 20 F, and showed no damage. This shows that the
literature claiming some species to be particularly tender should
probably be looked at critically. My plants went through temperatures
down to 20 F (minus 6 C) regularly at my former home, where I had
them in unheated cold frames. The present bulb house is unheated and
covered only with a transparent roof; the sides are wire mesh. The
bulbs are in raised beds of very well drained soil.

Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA

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