Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum

General Subjects => Travel / Places to Visit => Topic started by: Gail on October 22, 2014, 09:05:28 PM

Title: Syracuse
Post by: Gail on October 22, 2014, 09:05:28 PM

I was in Syracuse last week, chiefly to see Caravaggio's painting there, but walking from our hotel to the bus stop I was delighted to encounter an area of limestone pavement with hundreds of autumn-flowering narcissi - presumably N. elegans?? They were growing among ?Scilla autumnalis and further up I found a few flowering plants of ?Mandragora autumnalis.
Very happy to be corrected if I've misidentified these...

My Italian is even worse than my plant identification skills but I think the carved stone commemorates a visit by pope John Paul II in 1994.

Title: Re: Syracuse
Post by: Gail on October 22, 2014, 09:07:19 PM

Not rock garden plants, but just down the road was the Santuaro Madonna delle lacrame which had some wonderful silk floss trees in the grounds and a link fence smothered with Thunbergia grandiflora.

Title: Re: Syracuse
Post by: Mavers on October 23, 2014, 08:28:09 AM

How we would treasure those narcissus Gail & there they are flourishing with no attention at all.
Thanks for posting.
Mike

Title: Re: Syracuse
Post by: David Nicholson on October 23, 2014, 09:22:31 AM

Syracuse is one of my top  10 favourite cities.

Title: Re: Syracuse
Post by: Alan_b on October 24, 2014, 08:45:57 AM

I have always been a bit puzzled by the fact that we have autumn-flowering snowdrops that are hardy in the UK and can be grown outdoors and yet the same is not true for autumn-flowering narcissi.  Such a pity we cannot have them in our gardens.