April 2015 in the Northern Hemisphere

[hadacekf]

The Gentiana flourishes well this year.

[Maggi Young]

Franz!  These gentians are magnificent!  It is a pleasure to see them so happy in your garden.

[Anne Repnow]

Anemone obtusiloba is quite lovely as is the Gentiana!

My Trilliums are coming along at last:
T. kurabayashi
T. albidum
T. grandiflorum 'Flore Pleno' ('Snowbunting')

[Luc Gilgemyn]

The Gentiana flourishes well this year.

That's quite an understatement, Franz !!  They are absolutely gorgeous !!

.... the light blue one is to die for !!!!

[astragalus]

I second that, Luc.  Much a I love the deep blue, the light one is sensational.  And all of them growing so happily.

[Leena]

but I still feel sympathy for those poor cold tulips!

I did too, how tough the plants have to be, but 'm happy that they seemed to survive the snow and now the sun is shining and they are open.

Wonderful gentianas and trilliums!

[Tim Ingram]

So many plants coming into flower now but I wish we could grow gentians like that  - similar to some of those wonderful gardens in the Czech Republic. This is a transient beauty that we must make sure to collect seed from this year - Jeffersonia dubia 'Alba'.

[Anne Repnow]

That is a very beautiful plant, Tim! (I only have the normal purple-blue variety). Can you tell me what the correct botanical name is these days - is it Jeffersonia or Plagiorhegma? And as to seed: do you have experience of growing Jeffersonia from seed?

[Tim Ingram]

Anne - I know it as Jeffersonia - I shall have to learn a new language to call it Plagiorhegma, though it is that in the Collins Guide to Alpines that I have from the 1960's. I begin to find it difficult to know what a 'correct' name is with so many changes occurring at the moment! , but maybe some gardeners know it as that? There is also a lovely Korean form which has a darker centre to the normally purple-blue flower which Mark McDonough has shown on the NARGS Forum. All really lovely plants.

From seed they are easy but you have to collect it fresh in early summer (and it is rapidly dispersed when ripe and hidden under the developing leaves) and sow it immediately. We leave woodland seed like this in a cool cold frame, enclosed in fine mesh to protect them from mice and birds and kept watered in very dry spells. Good germination follows after the next winter, so about six or seven months later and the seedlings are then quite slow to grow on and need to be kept an eye on, very much in the same way as trilliums, erythroniums etc.

[David Nicholson]

................And as to seed: do you have experience of growing Jeffersonia from seed?

Some information on the "Yes, I'm so happy thread 2009" Reply 502

[Anne Repnow]

Thank you Tim, thank you David! I will try my luck - it is worth it I think.
And yes the babel of changing botanic names is awful. (I just changed Dicentra into Lamprocapnos in my lists...)

[arilnut]

Sorry for being late with this but I had petunia patagonica bloom in April.

[Anne Repnow]

Beautiful and exotic!