demise of an Erythronium border

demise of an Erythronium border
Luminita vollmer (Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:23:02 PDT)

Dear Diane - your message was an awesome read. Stories like this make it
all worth while to read each and every message on the board.
The question I have is - where do you all get these ideas about the plants
some of which I never heard of? Do you before bedtime look on the entire
ontology of the plant world and decide I want to have this plant? I know
that all plants are awesome - but some are really awesome. And the Erythronium
revolutum that you mention is one of the most awesome ones. I feel so left
out, even though I thought I knew about a lot of plants. Minnesota is a
large place, with few people, but it's cold. And there is a lot of grass
everywhere. I love it when even at my age - you hand me a totally new plant
I have never seem and it looks so awesome.

Thank you Diane, really.

Luminita

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 8:35 PM, Diane Whitehead <ldiane.whitehead@gmail.com>
wrote:

About 40 years ago I planted two Erythronium revolutum. Despite my
sending seeds to several seed exchanges
each year, they managed to seed themselves so that I had hundreds, and
their pink flowers were one of
the joys of spring every year. Till last year. I couldn't see any. Had
the deer eaten all the flowers? But there
weren't any leaves, either.

Then I noticed Anemone nemorosa leaves along the whole border. This is a
wild form with incredibly long
twiggy rhizomes, not the short-rhizomed named forms. It had been way down
at one end of the bed, and
while I wasn't paying attention it had zoomed over the Erythronium
territory where its intertwined rhizomes
had completely blocked Erythronium access to the sky.. I began digging it
out, and bucket loads went
into the garbage. I cleared about a quarter of the area.

Today there are ten wan-looking flowers and lots of single leaves in the
cleared area. I started clearing
again. It is going to take a couple of years for them to get their
strength back.

Diane Whitehead
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

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