June 2015 in the Southern Hemisphere

[fermi de Sousa]

Officially the first day of winter here in Australia and it feels it!
It might seem appropriate to have a snowdrop in flower but it's actually one of the autumn species, Galanthus peshmenii, orginally grown from seed from Rannweig Wallis. It is extremely tiny, only a couple of centimetres high - perhaps it needs feeding
cheers
fermi

[Jupiter]

Fermi my G. peshmenii is up but I don't think I'm going to get a flower. I was hopeful at first but now it looks like they are leaves emerging not buds. Maybe next year...

[fermi de Sousa]

Hi Jamus,
I think Otto grew his from the same batch of seed from Rannweig - I saw her Farrer-winning potful in the UK in 1997 and asked her to send me a seed-list. I initially got good germination but ended up with only a few bulbs so perhaps these mini ones are the hardiest in my garden! They've never looked as large or as sturdy as the ones I saw in the UK but I'm pleased that they produce a bloom or two even though very erratically
cheers
fermi

[Jupiter]

I like your little peshmenii, even if it is tiny. Speaking of germination I have had fantastic germination from nearly all of the seed you gave me. The PC Irises and others look like grass in the pots, very promising. The Cyclamen graceum are up too; they are so cute as babies!

[Anthony Darby]

Here's the children's "Geckos and Ladders", with edible planting, in Garden Lane, one of the shopping streets in Botany, our local town centre.

[Jupiter]

There's a town called Botany? I want to live there!

[fermi de Sousa]

But, Jamus,
everybody there could claim to be a Botanist!
cheers
fermi

[Jupiter]

I had a botanist here in my lab last week helping us identify some Brassicaceae weeds we were sent for virus testing. I knew enough to know that the names the agronomists had attached to them were wildly incorrect. They seem to think they are all called turnip weed and reckon that's close enough!

This one was new to me...

[Anthony Darby]

Has it got itchy hairs on the leaves? Looks like a weed that colonises the bare ground left behind after it has been denuded of grass by the council weed spraying (they are not very bright). My tortoises love it.

[Stephen Vella]

Jamus..have you not heard of Botany Bay in NSW? Named after sir Joseph banks!!
Sorry it's been a long time since showing up on this forum.. Hope the galanthus I passed on survived the dry spell you had?
The verbascum violetta did famously but was odd in that they changed colour from light pink in summer to deep purple as it turned cold and surprisingly shrugging off the frost, no damage on petals.

[Lesley Cox]

Your little Galanthus is very cute Fermi. I don't have that one but still have in flower - just beginning really, G. reginae-olgae, happy to be released into the garden after maybe 19 years in a pot. It's so late because we had a very dry autumn and many crosus too are still in flower. But today there's a river running through the garden. 3 inches of rain since early morning. It's jsut about 20 past 4pm now and still pouring down solidly.

I also still have in bloom a tall bearded iris called 'Pure as Gold,' a remontant, or re-blooming variety. Good to have a repeat performance six months after the main event. I'll buy a few more of this kind next season. This one, though I'm only interested in the gorgeous colour at present, has all the attributes of a winning Show iris, good bud count, fine branching, excellent texture and substance and so on. It has withstood a week of frosts and now the rain, still in excellent condition.

The auricula is a beauty but late flowers are not up to much. The flower is full and frilly, ochre yellow but flushed with crimson in front and almost fully crimson on the back. I think it deserves the name 'Flamenco.'

[Jupiter]

Lesley that Iris just glows! What a stunning colour and you've photographed it beautifully too.

Stephen, the little galanthus you sent me hasn't emerged yet but I'm not too worried, I think it will come up. I have others showing their noses and I don't think I've lost anything much this summer. I watered pretty regularly in the woodland and didn't let it dry out completely. As for the violetta, it didn't come true from seed. My plants were a dusky sort of pinkish purple as well, all of them the same which is interesting too. I'm not sure of the genetics of the cross, initially I thought perhaps it had crossed with the Verbascum chaixii album which I have everywhere, but it's not likely every seed from every plant would produce identical crosses, so it's more likely that my original plants were f2 or something and reverted...? But then you'd expect segregation as well so beats me, I can't explain it. I discussed it with a plant breeder here and she couldn't explain what was going on either, but suggested that my original violetta must be F1 hybrid.

EDIT: I think I worked it out. Violetta must be self infertile, so every seed produced was the result of bees carrying pollen from the nearby V. chaixii. Therefore all seed produced are F1 between those two with chaixii as the donor and therefore all identical.

[Stephen Vella]

Jamus .. The galanthus are pushing up already here and most likely from the excessive wet autumn. I don't remember one so wet and now it's become freezing cold, ice cold. The verbascums are not true violettas then but even more interesting. The spikes are not rigid and upright, more free form but interesting to see it change shades of purple, mine have become darker with the cold! No seed produced.
Woodbridge nursery are selling interesting hybrids of verbascum.
Cheers

[Jupiter]

Brugmansia sanguinea is flowering its head off and will do so for months to come.



Galanthus elwesii (old faithful)

[Jupiter]

Bergenia cordifolia




Alstroemeria cv.




Salvia discolor




Persicaria microcephala




Narcissus albidus ssp. albidus




Abutilon hybridum