March 2007

[Paddy Tobin]

Something especially to amuse Maggi.

I can take no credit for growing this as I purchased it only last night.

Asarum delaveyi

Paddy

[tonyg]

Thanks Tim

I would like to add that Cyclamen mystericum is not a contrived or staged photo - just how it grows!

[Paddy Tobin]

Just a few things in flower at the moment.

In a cold greenhouse:

Muscari 'Golden Fragrance'
Tulipa humulis 'Lilliput'
Tulipa iliensis




Paddy

[mark smyth]

I wouldnt know one from the other

[mark smyth]

my Muscari macrocarpum is finished quite a while now. In the garden the tiny Tulipa sogdiana is flowering.

[tonyg]

Oh Mark - you are no fun!!
It is a C graecum growing in my sand bed, nice large white flowered seedling.  Cyclamen coum has seeded into the middle with the (I think) quite convincing new 'hybrid' as a result.  Great flower power - a cyclamen with two flowering seasons every year!!  Look closely and you'll see one stray leaf which gives the game away.

[Paddy Tobin]

Flowering in the garden.

Ipheoin uniflorum
Ipheoin uniflorum 'Charlotte Bishop'
Ribes laurifolium
Saxifraga 'Elizabeth'
Ditto
Tulipa kaufmannia 'Fashion'



Paddy

[tonyg]

On a serious note - I have some foliage I would like advice on. 

Sternbergia sicula.  2 clumps about 30 inches apart.  One developed brown spots on healthy leaves in autumn 2006.  The other remained healthy until recently.  Clump 1 is now degenerating to a mushy mess while clump two has 'got the bug'.  Whats happening?  Is there any hope?  The same things in pots under glass are fine.  They've been outside for a couple of years and this has not been a hard winter so it is not cold that is the problem.

[Lesley Cox]

Wow, I ADORE that Asarum. A real stunner. And Tulipa iliensis as well. Lovely pics everyone. Paddy a little while ago I was looking for this season's seed of Narcissus cuatrecasassii for you but then remembered I'd sown it a month ago. Went out to retrive some but they are germinating so too late, but if you don't obtain it in the meantime, remind me next (southern spring) and I'll save it for you. It seeds reliably.

[mark smyth]

could be bulb/basal rot. I had some snowdrops do the same resently. When I dug them they were a stinking mess.

[mark smyth]

Paddy, Margaret Glynn and Brian Duncan grow N. cuatrecasassii

[Lesley Cox]

Or it looks like that awful thing Mark showed a while back on some snowdrops, and which attacks Amaryllidaceae. Cut off affected parts before it spreads further, dig and dip in fungicide, dry bulbs then dip again and then replant somewhere else, preferably in pots to isolate. Or tell me to teach my granny!

[tonyg]

Thanks Mark & Lesley - I'll dig them and see if there is anything to rescue.  These problems creep up on you, only noticed how bad it was when the adjacent narcissus bloomed.  Wet/damp and mild has been all to common here this winter which cannot have helped.

[Maggi Young]

Great Asarum, Paddy, I do like them, so wierd and other worldly. Lots of other goodies flowering with you, too, I see.   I'm always threatening to get more tulipa species, but it never happens!

Tony, there's a C. graecum loose in your garden! How long has been out there? we have some near the eaves of the house but I worry about them! Maybe the coum is keeping it warm.
Whatever is wrong with the Sternbergia, I hope it doesn't spread. I would think it a rot more to do with damp than cold, anyway. Yuck!

[tonyg]

Maggi there are indeed Cyclamen graecum loose in my garden!  They don't seem to have a problem with what passes for a cold winter down here.  I am told that they need 'a pane of glass over them' in summer to get them to flower well though.  The one in the sand bed makes a few flowers every year, one by the south wall of the house doesn't.  I am not going to be leaving panes of glass lying around the garden however - not for a good few years yet!