What am I doing wrong?

[Pennine Wanderer]

I currently have two Fritillaria coming into flower.  Fritillaria Carica which I bought as bulbs last autumn and Fritillaria Drenovskii which I have grown from seed, sown in 2008.  The flower stems of both plants are lying parallel to the compost instead of standing upright.  They have been fed with a weak solution of tomato feed and kept sufficiently watered.  Any suggestions as to why they are doing this and what I have done wrong would be gratefully appreciated.

[Tony Willis]

I find this is a characteristic of many fritillaria species and as the buds develop they will elongate and stand upright. Many times the flowers actually open in this position and then gradually the stem grows.

[Gerry Webster]

Tony may well be right though I have never experienced this myself. If the stems look strong & healthy I imagine they will sort themselves out but if they look weak or as if they had wilted they may be suffering from a fungal infection ("keel over disease"). I haven't heard of incidents of this recently but 10 or so years ago it seems to have been fairly common & F. carica was said to be particularly susceptible.

[Tony Willis]

If you look at my picture of Arthur's frit -reply 25 on the Fritillaria 2013 thread you can probably see this is exactly how it started and actually opened its flowers at ground level. It is now almost upright.

edit by maggi to add link to the post mentioned above :
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=10042.msg269467#msg269467

[Pennine Wanderer]

Many thanks Tony & Gerry for your comments and to Maggie for the thread.  I will wait to see what happens.

[Gerry Webster]

I currently have two Fritillaria coming into flower.  Fritillaria Carica which I bought as bulbs last autumn and Fritillaria Drenovskii which I have grown from seed, sown in 2008.  The flower stems of both plants are lying parallel to the compost instead of standing upright.  They have been fed with a weak solution of tomato feed and kept sufficiently watered.  Any suggestions as to why they are doing this and what I have done wrong would be gratefully appreciated.

I find this is a characteristic of many fritillaria species and as the buds develop they will elongate and stand upright. Many times the flowers actually open in this position and then gradually the stem grows.

Tony may well be right though I have never experienced this myself. If the stems look strong & healthy I imagine they will sort themselves out but if they look weak or as if they had wilted they may be suffering from a fungal infection ("keel over disease"). I haven't heard of incidents of this recently but 10 or so years ago it seems to have been fairly common & F. carica was said to be particularly susceptible.

I observed this for the first time in 30 years of growing frits this morning in F. tubiformis. The plant appears to be quite healthy & all the plants  around are upright.