Pyrola from seed

[cohan]

interesting stuff, i have yet to read the article (off to work soonish...)
diane--treating the plants as cuttings is exactly what i was thinking, and i am wondering if the time to do is at/after flowering time when the plants are sending new growth...i will have to do some experimenting, as there are plenty of plants here (they get pulled up when raking leaves or weeding sometimes, and some are in mow zones, so i don't have to be overcautious--P asarifolia especially, that is..

moneses absolutely has nothing to do with pines here, there are none (well there could be one in a square mile, there used to be one on the far end of the family farm, i haven't been there in decades).. it is not abundant like pyrola or orthilia, but there are numerous small scattered colonies---often under picea glauca, which can be a moist or dry habitat here;
right on my 6 acres, i have found 2 colonies (there could be more, small colonies are very hard to find out of flower if they are among other vegetation as they usually are here except in dry spruce spots)--one is at the drier end of my property (top of a slight incline) below (north side of) a lilac and sorbus, dappled sun-the 'trees' have probably been there for a couple of decades at least, and the moneses grow among lilac suckers, grass and weeds like dandelion and clover; since i found them i have been trying to weed out the other stuff, hard without pulling up the moneses! and the other spot is a deeper shade spot in moss (and other plants) just behind-north again- a row of picea glauca, this is at the other, moister, end of the property..
the pyrolas and orthilias also seem to grow in both moist and dry places, deep shade and more open spots...

corallorhizas here are in moist to medium spots..interestingly, around where our sewer lagoon was dug in the early 70's is rather low, moist-wet soil with mixed woods (picea, larix, salix, betula, populus) and a strong population of C trifida has developed, which i do not remember growing up here (no association with the sewer, its not that near or specific)--the interesting thing is that the orchids continue up from the moist low natural soil onto the banks around the sewer which are -heavily overgrown with all sorts of vegetation- mostly clayish soil from deeper down, the organic topsoil all went into a separate pile... this clayey soil has had decades to build up a natural flora and microbial activity of course, but still has no appearance of loose organic soil...

[cohan]

i'm still going through summer photos, and i just happened to have a folder open with Moneses...lol
a few shots from the plants growing under the lilac...
here's what else was flowering around the place on that day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/June292010Home#

[Hoy]

Wellknown plants in an unknown setting. Thanks.
My camera refuses to take sharp pictures of white flowers! The autofocus choose something else - always! Have to wish for a new camera for Xmas....

[cohan]

thanks, trond--with these, the hardest part of shooting is to get down there...lol
i would have a hard time living without a selective focussing tool (using centre pinpoint for small flowers), and also setting light reading for  pinpoint focus for flowers, often..

[cohan]

here is one i am not sure about, i should look it up in efloras...
it seems very much like P asarifolia, yet is distinct in leaf, in particular--most asarifolia here have slightly larger leaves than this form, and shiny and smooth, without the texture you see on these; flowers may be a bit darker on these as well, though i think there is variation in the regular asarifolia..
i have seen this leaf form a number of times, always in wet areas, usually at the edge of wet woods, or on hummocks in semi open wet areas with tall grasses, smallish salix, etc..
the full album for this site is here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/June282010APrimrosesSparrowSEggsAndMore#
 a wonderful site, around 6 miles from home..
i still have to post some other shots from that day on my alberta thread..

last shot is a view of part of the site-the pyrolas would be along the fenceline under and just outside the small trees you see along the fence about 2/3 of the way into the image from the left... just on the border between a moist woody area, and the wet grassy area in the ditch..

[johnw]

Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!

Merciful, that is a beauty. Does it have a name?

johnw - storm beginning just now.  +4c

[Hoy]

Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!

Merciful, that is a beauty. Does it have a name?

johnw - storm beginning just now.  +4c

johnw,
I am not sure it has a name! The problem is that I loose all labels and I got tired of filing my plants years ago!
Maybe it is 'Horizon Monarch', but I am not sure. I have 3 different but very similar plants in that bed. It can also be an unnamed cross from Glendoick, I have some of them too planted there, or something brought up from seed.
(I have about 300 rhodos in my garden, almost all different)

[Hoy]

cohan,
A nice plant this pink Pyrola. I have never seen pink ones here, but I have read that there are some places. Pyrolas here are always connected with at least seasonally moist areas and never with very dry places. You often find them in spruce forests and also in willow thickets in the subalpine zone.

[cohan]

cohan,
A nice plant this pink Pyrola. I have never seen pink ones here, but I have read that there are some places. Pyrolas here are always connected with at least seasonally moist areas and never with very dry places. You often find them in spruce forests and also in willow thickets in the subalpine zone.

tks, trond--by contrast, almost all pyrolas here are pink! i have some that i think are P elipticala which has white flowers, but it is much less common than asarifolia--i don't think it is rare, by any stretch, but asarifolia is very common; i have been gradually finding more elipiticala, but out of flower, it is distinguished by a small difference in leaf shape-less round-more 'eliptical' i suppose! distinct, but only seen fairly close, and we know not every plant flowers, so even in the places i know it grows, i have to look hard to find them..i think it may be more specific in its habitat-so far i have only seen it in sort of open deciduous woods-which is an unstable environment here--this sort of place is likely to be grazed on farms (more so than coniferous darker forest with less forage) and over time will tend to be overgrown with spruce, anyway, so maybe this is why i don't see large colonies of elipticala..

asarifolia and and orthilia form larger colonies in moister spots-more medium than wet-but they do occur in dry deep shade under spruce as well..

[cohan]

some of shots of what i believe to be Pyrola ellipticala;
ironically, this year there seemed to be more (doesn't mean a lot! just more..) flowering stems than i have found in this area in the last couple of years, but there was fairly heavy hail (small pieces but a lot) just around that time, so the flower stems i found were mostly cut off at the lowest couple of flowers, and or bruised..
this hail came on a cool evening with a couple of cool days after, so in shady places, the hail stayed on the ground for hours or even a day or more in some spots--this caused frost damage on top of the physical damage--i lost some seedlings in pots as well (not pyrola seedlings)..
i only noticed now looking at these photos that some have red flower stalks, and some are all pale green...

[Hoy]

cohan,
P elliptica seems to be a cute little thing!
You had hail - we had unseasonal late frost damaging many plants. In the high elevations, that was, should think those plants could take freezing but it was really cold.
You love exploring the plants do you

[cohan]

tks, trond--yes, a nice plant, and of course interesting to me because its white, and pink asarifolia is everywhere 

we have had two cold summers here, there was frost in nearly every month (we might have got about 6 weeks without, right here, but other places in the province had worse luck, crops damaged etc)..no effect on native plants, nor the few exotics we have here, but the hail was damaging to some things (we usually have hail several times, but not all heavy)--some leaves are unaffected, most natives not easily damaged, but this one was hard on small forest species because it gathered so much on the ground..
funny, i have a cultivated lonicera, leaves are always damaged by hail, but it was still flowering when we had already had frost for weeks, below -10C....

yes, i love exploring--i have only been back here since summer 07, and i am still finding new (to me) species even in this small area, and finding species in more places--plus riding my bike around the area, so i found several new things this year