Please be aware that seeds of many Allium species are donated, often in
large amounts, to the North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS) Seed
Exchange and, I assume, to the Alpine Garden Society (AGS) and Scottish
Rock Garden Club (SRGC) exchanges. Joining one or more of these
societies gives you access to thousands of kinds of seeds at very low
cost. Alliums are one of the easiest genera of bulbs to grow, flowering
after as little as 2 years. The last two years our NARGS chapter handled
the "surplus" distribution, the second round where members could order
up to 100 packets, and there must have been more than 50 species or
subspecies of Allium in that box (the order filling took place in my
spare room, so I'm very familiar with it). If Allium were an interest of
mine, I would have been very happy about that! I do grow a few,
particularly the small western American species, and a couple of tall
ones for cutting. Just planted about 60 French Gray shallots in the
vegetable garden and hope they prosper.

Someone mentioned Allium nigrum as potentially invasive and I'd agree
with that. It's frequent in cultivated fields where native so must
spread readily by offsets. The only one I grow that's prone to spread is
Allium pulchellum, but it is such a pretty cut flower that I keep it in
an area where it's easily controlled.

Membership in all the international rock garden societies (there are
more than the three mentioned above) is declining disturbingly, partly
because of demographics. Another factor is the decision by the US
government to prohibit the importation of small quantities of garden
seed without a permit. The permits (thanks largely to the effort of
Joyce Fingerut of NARGS) can be obtained without cost, but they have to
be renewed frequently and the procedure is tedious. NARGS has to send
its permits out to all its foreign members to enable them to donate, and
people in the USA who belong to AGS or SRGC have to get the permits and
send them to the societies with their seed orders. The root of this
annoyance was the move of the US Department of Agriculture to place its
inspection subdepartment (wonderfully known by the acronym APHIS) in the
Department of Homeland Security, established newly after the 9-11
attack; moves of this kind were popular because it allowed the parent
agencies to transfer the expense of the subdepartments to the
well-funded DHS. Nonetheless, I encourage our PBS members to join one or
more rock garden societies, even if you don't have a "rock garden." All
three have good quarterly print journals and interesting meetings. And
Allium seeds.

Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon
_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…