Six feet tall and blooming in Portland: What is it?
Paul LICHT (Sun, 10 Jun 2018 12:18:53 PDT)

Nathan
I have both Merwilla and Drimia (which I still refer to as Urginea). They
are completely different, The Merwill hasn't even sent up buds yet and
looks entirely different. The Urginea have enormous bulbs, wider leaves and
of course, the bulbs are entirely different. I've had the Urginea for 5yrs
or more. Several started as relatively large bulbs and others from small
offsets; all from Tim Gregory. His in Woodside do not bloom as early as
mine in El Cerrito, The leaves are almost fully dried back now and will
remain dormant. Some will get a little water because they're mixed with
other stuff. For some reason, I never bothered to photograph the flowers.

Paul

On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 11:35 AM, Nathan Lange <plantsman@comcast.net>
wrote:

Hi Paul,

Your plants sound very interesting and significantly deviate from anything
I've ever seen before. Do you have pictures? What is the source of your
plants? Approximately, when did the foliage die back this year? The foliage
on my non-irrigated plants was still green a month ago.

The established colonies of bulbs in the Sacramento area (hot dry summers)
that I've seen consistently flower in late July into August. Plants in
cooler Sonoma County flower much later with the flowering times seemingly
correlated with when the foliage dies back. I have never seen a plant in
flower before July.

Sometimes, I get one of the old names, Scilla maritima, mixed up with
Scilla natalensis (Merwilla plumbea) which, in my experience, better fits
the flowering time you described. Any possibility of that? I feel compelled
to ask because April/May flowering Drimia maritima is really unusual.

Does anyone else grow Drimia maritima in California that flower before
June?

Nathan

At 08:03 AM 6/10/2018, you wrote:

I have 6 or more in my Berkeley area garden. They are multiplying a bit
too
fast. All bloomed this year and blooming finished about a month ago. The
leaves are now dying back.

Paul

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