Late Bulb 2003 - report by Sandy Leven

Up with the Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee……

I know he was a man but Dundee City was bonnie on the show day [and most other days as well!].
……..bright sunshine beating down….
………..and the SRGC was inside the University tower building.

Ian Butterfield the renowned expert on Pleiones was giving two lectures. As I was forced to be schizophrenic and was to be in St Andrews and Dundee at two different events at the same time, I split my day in two and it was Rotary in the AM and Pleiones in the PM. So I missed Ian’s first talk and when I heard and more importantly saw the afternoon lecture I was even more sorry to have missed the morning talk. Ian distributed 3D glasses to everyone and then I was part of my first 3D-plant lecture. Stereoscopic cameras, projector and 3D slides made the flowers jump out from the screen!
 And what flowers they were. Ian showed us a large number of new Pleiones, most of the results of his own crosses. He explained that he was trying to get orange flowers but was not yet satisfied.

There are lots of superb Pleione pictures and masses of information on THE PLEIONE WEBSITE.  Many of the new hybrids, which Ian talked about, are pictured here. The ones with Volcano names and bird’s names are usually his

Accompanying the lectures was a display of autumn flowering plants and bulbs, mainly Gentians from Ian McNaughton, Cyclamen from Glassford Sprunt and Jean Wyllie and several crocuses and Colchicums from I forget whom. Sorry.

Anne Chambers showed a print of her superb painting of Galanthus ‘Sophie North’. There are only 100 prints in the run and already 20 plus are taken. At £20 each the prints are a fantastic bargain. I immediately snapped one up and plan to but more as presents, however ‘Bookman Scott’ sold me a book about Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Traveller and Plant Collector so my funds were a bit depleted.

This picture does not do the print justice. I will retake the picture and tell you more about it and where you can get a copy later.

Lots of members took the Road to Dundee.
Here are some of the flowers, which they saw.

Crocus serotinus form 1

Crocus serotinus form 2

Crocus serotinus salzmannii ‘El Tourcal’

Crocus hadriaticus

Colchicum atropurpureus

Colchicum speciosus albus

Cyclamen graecum grown from SRGC seed sown 1984

Another Cyclamen graecum grown from the same batch of SRGC seed sown 1984

Cyclamen graecum

Cyclamen hederifolium

Cyclamen mirabile

Ian MacNaughton with his wife Beryl, who runs ‘MacPlants’ one of our best nurseries near  Edinburgh

Ian MacNaughton showed a number of pans of his latest Gentian seedlings, which as you will see varied in flower colour and flower shape. They were all compact well flowered plants. Ian has been breeding his own hybrids for many years and compactness of form was one of his aims. I think his other aims were for early flowering and multiple flowers per stem. He is succeeding magnificently.

Quite a variety!

Three typical compact good blue mutiflowered plants

This is a really compact plant

Some of the deep blues are suffused with red and the whites are good substantial whites with if anything just a touch of green on the sepal reverse. This keeps their ‘cool’ colour.

You can see the touch of red in these sepals

Here there is morewhite than blue. The blue is like a wash on the petals

One of the magnificent white plants

A nice pale blue plant heading towards what we thought of as farrerii  colour for a long time [in fact G farreri is quite variable in colour]

I love all the forms but covet the mid-blue with bold white markings on the sepals.  I would name this plant St Andrew!

Well done Ian. The plants are just fabulous.

I greatly enjoyed meeting friends again and because it was only half a day it was all too short. Many thanks to Barry and Cathy Caudwell for their hard work, enthusiasm and for ensuring that the day was such a great success.

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