This year I got a nice starter collection of Lachenalia species from Telos Rare Bulbs, and the first to bloom is viridiflora. The color is indeed almost other-worldly. Making it more interesting, the small buds start out pink, like Virginia bluebell. I would attach a photo but there are some excellent images on the wiki. If you're set up to grow dry-summer bulbs, by all means this is a little gem to consider.
The secret seems to be the expression of chlorophyll in the flower, overprinted with dark blue anthos. Someone should try to get that green gene into hyacinth....
Bob Lauf.
On Sunday, November 22, 2020, 05:19:39 AM EST, Ceridwen Lloyd via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
Ah! A fellow turquoise flower enthusiast, good-o!
I have some lachenalia viridiflora that I purchased as bulbs, living on an outdoor table in smallish terra-cotta pots with only the rain (a little frost pocket in the Adelaide Hills, zone 9 but nearly zone 8 in a La Niña year like now) and they flower their little hearts out and have multiplied away like mad in a few short years.
I have Ixia viridiflora in a raised (filled with sandy loam, because we have rocky clay) narrow semicircular stone bed around a tree (which I wish was a jacaranda, but it’s too cold here) and they form a gorgeous hazy penumbra right about now. They flower at the same time as jacaranda and are the perfect colour to sing with them. Someone needs to plant a vast area of these together, like a warm climate version of beech and bluebell woods.
I also adore - though it’s not a bulb - Oxypetalum or Tweedia, and have some seedlings just popping up now. Not quite turquoise, but not quite blue either.
And of course I hang out for the day I can get my hands on Ferraria ferrariola. I didn’t here hear a peep from Luminita regarding the last bulb exchange so I guess that’s a no. I wonder who the donor was?
I’ve emailed David Glenn at Lambley nursery to see whether any of the original stock is obtainable at all. He is married to the artist Criss Canning and if you Google images for the iris you get to see a painting she did of them.
Cheers,
Ceridwen
Sent from my iPhone
> On 22 Nov 2020, at 18:37, Lee Poulsen via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
>
> Ooh! Ooh! If you find seeds, I want some too. One of my favorite “topics” of plants to grow are those with flowers in the cyan or teal part of the spectrum. They’re rarer than true blue flowers. A long time ago when the PBS list had some topic discussions, we went through all of the colors on the color wheel, and there was a small discussion of the few flowers that are teal. Luckily two of them are bulbs from the western Cape Province area of South Africa. So if you can grow bulbs from that area, you can try growing Lachenalia viridiflora and Ixia viridiflora. ‘Viridiflora’ in this case isn’t green. It’s a turquoise/teal/aquamarine color. And they’re stunning. (I had a pot completely full of Lachenalia viridiflora in full bloom one winter and it was so amazing to stare at. You just don’t see that color in nature very often at all.)
>
> Anyway, Jane McGary mentioned that she knew of some Iris tuberosa that were teal in color, but I never found any pictures on the internet, and I’ve ordered various seeds that were supposed to have some bluish flowers, but none of them have been teal. She also mentioned that there was a teal gentian as well. But those aren’t bulbs.
>
> BTW, even if I can’t grow them, I still want to see them in person. There is an absolutely stunning one, that is off-topic because it’s not a bulb, but if you’re offered the opportunity to see the Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) in flower, take it. The flowers don’t look like they are real. Sadly, it is tropical and requires a lot of space to grow. Luckily, the Huntington Gardens has an amazing vine growing in their large conservatory greenhouse, and it blooms regularly.
>
> (And in case anyone wants to know the others that I know about, there’s another small tropical called Ecbolium viride, as well as two Puyas, P. alpestris
> and P. berteroniana. The two Puya will grow here, but they get very big and have very spiny leaf edges. Luckily the Huntington grows both of them outside in its famous cactus and succulent garden. Their flowers also look unreal. I would love to grow and see that Iris tuberosa ‘Blue Jade’, and see the gentian that Jane knows about because I don’t think it will grow here in Southern California.)
>
> --Lee Poulsen
> Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
> Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m
>
>> On Nov 21, 2020, at 4:40 AM, Ceridwen Lloyd via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> This was offered by Lambley Nursery here in Australia in 2017, sadly mine has not survived.
>> Does anyone have plants (in Australia) or seed (elsewhere) at all?
>> Thanks
>> Ceridwen
>
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