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moraea insolens

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Michael Mace:
I just noticed this thread. Not sure if anyone is still listening, but just in case...

Silverhill offered this species once or twice in the past couple of decades. I have been growing it since 2013, and I know of one other person who has it as well. It hasn't bloomed yet for either of us. In my garden, the corms produce one long threadlike leaf, each year a little bit thicker and longer. Hopefully some day they'll reach blooming size.

I'm able to bloom most of the other winter-growing Moraeas, so I am not sure what the problem is for this one. Maybe I need to burn something over it in the summer, or maybe my climate is a bit too dry for it. It native habitat is a bit moister in summer than mine.

I presume other people have had similar problems getting it to bloom, or it would be in circulation by now.

If anyone has suggestions on how to make it happy, I'm all ears.

Mike

PS: If I ever get seeds from it, I'll share them.

Michael Mace:
2023 update:

--Burned a very small pile of twigs and dried grass over the bed where the dormant M. insolens corms were, fall 2021.
--One corm bloomed with a single flower, spring 2022. The plants are not self-fertile, so I could not make seeds of the species. I did get a few hybrids using the pollen, though.
--Forgot to repeat the burning in summer 2022.
--No flowers from M. insolens in spring 2023.
--Repeated the burning ritual in summer 2023. Hoping for more flowers next spring.

Mike

Robert:
Hello Mike,

I just became aware of this thread a few days ago. I am keenly interested in your experiments and outcomes with Moraea insolens.

As you are likely well aware, here in California many native plants species respond to fire in various ways. For example, many Arctostaphylos species are obligate seeders and will germinate in great numbers after a fire. During the first few years after the 2014 King Fire in El Dorado County, California I observed large numbers of Arctostaphylos viscida ssp. viscida germinating on the crest of Poho Ridge, where the intensity of the fire was greatest.

I have never observed any California native bulbous species responding to fire as your experiments with Moraea insolens might suggest. I have studied an exceptionally large ecotype of Erythronium multiscapideum in the Sweetwater Creek area for 3 decades that reproduces abundantly vegetatively yet produces very few flowers each season. There are millions of plants in this population covering many acres of mostly dense chaparral habitat. Where fire or other forces have removed the chaparral cover the plants still rarely bloom. The nearby Kanaka Valley populations of Erythronium multiscapideum bloom abundantly and reproduce vegetatively much more slowly.


I grow plants from the Sweetwater Creek ecotype, as well as plants from many other populations in our Sacramento garden. There appears to be a large genetic component to Sweetwater Creek ecotype’s propensity to bloom sparsely. It would be interesting to find out if plants from unrelated populations of Moraea insolens exhibit the same characteristic to bloom reluctantly.

I look forward to the continuing results of your experiments.

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