Podophyllum flowering

[Lesley Cox]

When I had 2 previous plants of SD, they did have the brown spotting but perhaps this one doesn't  because it and the Ks are all in my shade house with no sun at all. I have been reading with interest, Graham Rice's comments about the two plants, in his blog "The Transatlantic Gardener." It seems it's not difficult to mix the two at least under some conditions. There is a superb patch of SD in the Dunedin Botanic Gardens so I'll go there this week and have a look at it, compared with mine. I lost my previous SDs because of too much heat and dry over a couple of years so have resorted to pots in full shade for several choice plants now.

[Maggi Young]

Hmmm, yes, not very spotty at the moment... but you can see in the sun where the spots "should" be... I think it will be the shade that is the problem.

[Hoy]

Lesley, a beautiful Podophyllum! I am very fond of Podophyllums and they do very well here  - if the slugs let them alone. Unfortunately the spring growth is irresistible for the pest

P. aurantiocaule has withstood the culprits so far - here from May 2011

[Lesley Cox]

I hate to have to tell you this Trond, but I have no slugs or snails! Really! It makes life and gardening a lot easier.

Those are very lovely flowers on P. aurantiocaule, and I like the slight furriness on the young leaves.

[art600]

Lesley

Is this a New Zealand thing, or are you just incredibly lucky.

Here the slugs and snails always manage to eat the finest flower - before you can photograph it.

[Hoy]

Lesley

Is this a New Zealand thing, or are you just incredibly lucky.

Yes, I too do wonder

[Lesley Cox]

I'm just incredibly lucky. I had slugs and snails in previous gardens but for some reason there are none where I am now. Hokonui Alpines, the nursery I quite frequently mention, has no snails either tho' I'm not sure about slugs. In my previous garden I had a lot of little brown Australian tree frogs and they I think, kept any slugs under control because I had no slugs or snails there either. My present garden is only about 4kms from that one. I had the frogs here too for a number of years but they seem to have gone now tho' I hear one occasionally on a spring night. Sometimes if I picked up a tray of plants from where it had been sitting on the ground for a few weeks, there could be a dozen or more of the little frogs sitting there. They ranged from just a cm long to about 5cms for the really big ones.

About 2 years ago Teddy was playing with something and I realized ir was a snail, quite a large one, and I took it from him and killed it but he went right back under the wire fence to next door where a house was being built. The new people had brought some large pots of plants from the house they were moving from in town and stacked them along our fence line for later planting out. Teddy helped himself to another snail from one of the pots which he'd knocked over. I went through the lot and removed about a dozen snails and no more have been seen here since so I must have got the lot.

I am very careful with any plant I buy or am given, to search it carefully for slugs, snails or their eggs and so far, have been successful in keeping them out of my garden. I don't think we have as many species in NZ as you do in the north. I remember walking to a pub one evening in the Lake District and seeing black slugs 6" long going across the road. We have nothing like that. Our native snails, which I've never seen, are protected. It must make people hate me when I say I have no slugs or snails.

[Hoy]

"It must make people hate me when I say I have no slugs or snails."
Lesley, not at all but I am very envious!

Although I try to keep the population of the bigger slugs down the small ones are as bad as the big ones. Also snails are problematic. They do a lot of mischief in pots.

[Anthony Darby]

We have both snails and slugs, but they don't seem to be too problematic (touch wood). There's a row of Phormium at the edge of the footpath bordering the Greenmount Reserve. When it rains the footpath is covered in snails, very like Helix aspersa, at night. Great for the blue-tongued skink. The song thrushes find them in the garden too, as I find them smashed up on the patio.