[ Lost in the Landscape ]

instant gratification

About ten days ago my ship­ment of fall-planting bulbs arrived from Telos Rare Bulbs. Although I’ve been try­ing to use more Cal­i­for­nia native species in the gar­den, I suc­cumbed to the wiley good looks of some South African and South Amer­i­can species.

Two of the bulbs came with flow­ers attached. If they’d been bulbs like tulips or daffodils–plants that bloom while in active growth–I might have pan­icked a bit. But these are species that prac­ti­cally bloom in their sleep, send­ing out blooms while they’re dor­mant, before the leaves break the sur­face of the ground. This way the plants were bloom­ing from stored reserves inside the bulb and weren’t being harmed by being yanked out of the ground while they were grow­ing and blooming.

Shown here as received is Rhodophiala bifida, oxblood lily or school­house lily, a species orig­i­nates in Argentina and Uruguay. It’s a some­what old-fashioned bulb that has a cer­tain pass-along pop­u­la­tion in some areas of the South.

I planted the bulb last week­end, and within days the flow­ers had opened. It was prac­ti­cally like going to a florist and stick­ing the flow­ers in the ground. Talk about instant gratification!

And another with a flow­er­ing stem emerg­ing from the bulb was Ner­ine sarnien­sis var. cor­usca major, a species that orig­i­nates in South Africa. This is how it looked ear­lier today. More instant gratification.

I wrote ear­lier about the naked ladies, Ama­rayl­lis bel­ladonna, a plant with a sim­i­lar habit of bloom­ing while it’s dor­mant. All the naked ladies have con­cluded their bloom­ing around town, so these other plants also of the amaryl­lis fam­ily will extend the bloom­ing sea­son, as well as extend the com­mon pink color range of the amaryllis.

Gar­den­ing so often deals with bio­log­i­cal processes that verge on white magic. You put a lit­tle seed or an unpromis­ing brown bulb into the ground, only to be rewarded months later by lush growth and amaz­ing flow­ers. The expe­ri­ence of plant­ing these new bulbs and get­ting flow­ers just a few days later seemed a lit­tle strange, almost wrong. Where was the long sea­son of wait­ing and expectation?

But I won’t com­plain too loudly. It’s nice when some things come so easily.

October 03 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Amaryllis balladonna • bulbs • Nerine sarniensis • oxblood lily • Rhodophiala bifida • schoolhouse lily • Telos Rare Bulbs | No Comments »

no such thing as a boring plant

The Botany Photo of the Day page at the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia Botan­i­cal Gar­den site is always worth a visit. They post a photo, along with a brief dis­cus­sion that points to a pile of ref­er­ences that you could fol­low around and keep your­self happy, inter­ested and unpro­duc­tive for much of a morn­ing. Why go out­side and pull weeds?

Their plant for May Day, Frit­il­laria affi­nis, is a native of West­ern North Amer­ica, and a plant occa­sion­ally offered in bulb cat­a­logs. Frit­il­lar­ias come from dry-summer regions and require sim­i­lar con­di­tions to sur­vive in gar­dens. This is one of the eas­ier species, hardy from zone 6–9.

Photo by Jackie Cham­bers [ source ]

May 02 2008 | Categories: gardening • plant profiles | Tags: Botany Photo of the Day • bulbs • Fritillaria affinis • University of British Columbia Botanical Garden | No Comments »

blue dicks

Dich­e­lostemma cap­i­ta­tum, in bloom in the gar­den now:

My plants come from a native plant sale ten years ago, and they’ve mul­ti­plied in the front yard, through both divi­sion of the bulbs and self-sowing. In a wet year the flow­er­ing stems may rise up two feet, and lit­tle clus­ters of laven­der blos­soms for a cou­ple of weeks. Though mostly stems, the plants in bloom are sur­pris­ingly strik­ing. Out of bloom, there’s so lit­tle to the plants that they almost van­ish out of sight.

I haven’t been out to the local canyons this sea­son, but I’m sure the blue dicks (really, that’s what they call them!) are mak­ing their pres­ence known. Even if you don’t devote your whole yard to natives, hav­ing some exem­plary ones around con­nects you to your envi­ron­ment. You know that if some­thing is bloom­ing in your yard it’s bloom­ing in the wild lands around you. You feel a part of some­thing much larger than your own gar­den. On the other hand, with things like hybrid petu­nias or mod­ern roses, well, they might look pretty, but they don’t root you in the same way. They don’t give you that same sense of place and belonging.

March 08 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles • rambles | Tags: bulbs • Dichelostemma capitatum • native plants | 2 Comments »

cats, bulbs, corms and tubers

Here’s a pic­ture of our cat Scooter, squinting:

Lovely, eh? She’s def­i­nitely great com­pany in the house or when we’re out­side gar­den­ing. But being a cat, she’ll be around one minute and off doing some­thing else the next, only to reap­pear when you least expect it. Some­thing like bulbs in the garden.

You plant the bulbs in the ground, add some water, and prac­ti­cally for­get about them. Then when they’re ready, they emerge and bloom for a few days or a few weeks. Then they’re not there any­more, long before you get tired of them.

Most of the paper­white nar­cis­sus in the gar­den have already bloomed. In San Diego they mark the start of the long bulb sea­son, with its long suc­ces­sions of nar­cis­sus, cycla­men, freesia, dich­e­lostemma, blom­me­ria, oxalis, ornithogalum, ixia, ranun­cu­lus, home­ria, calla, amaryl­lis, glad­i­o­lus, plus what­ever else that you’d for­got­ten that you’d put into the ground. I never get tired of see­ing them when they come decide to come around around. Some­thing like the favorite cat…

November 30 2007 | Categories: gardening • my garden • rambles | Tags: bulbs • cats • corms • tubers | 1 Comment »