Identifying bulbs by shape!

[SueG]

Yesterday I was potting up my bulbs (please don't tell me I should have done it sooner - I've just finished an Open University course, done for fun, which took up my spare time) and 2 years ago I planted some seeds from the RHS 'Narcissus mixed'. When I tipped the pot out yesterday I had lots of bulbs which I sorted into 3 categories, slim bulbs with roots ht:w ration about 4:1, slim bulbs that were already showing a shoot as well as a roots, and 3 bulbs which were about 3.5cm long and looked like a sock stuffed with newspaper - so approximately cylindrical but slightly knobbly, the roots were relatively thick and looked 'crimped'.
Would anyone like to give their views as to the possible sort of narcissus the long knobbly bulbs might be? I'd have taken a picture but had left my camera at work.
Ta
Sue

[mark smyth]

Just like us not all bulbs are uniform. Maybe the crimped bulbs are contractile roots to pull the bulb deeper. Why knock them out again for a photo?

[tonyg]

Mark is right, the bulbs are trying to get deeper which pulls them out of shape.
Typically the larger narcissus species and their hybrids are most likely to find themselves too shallow in a pot, they will end up right at the bottom given time.  They might be better planted in a garden bed.

[SueG]

Thats the problem, I didn't take detailed notes when I got the seed as whether it came from little narcissus or big ones (if you know what I mean!) so I could be growing King Alfred's or minatures. While it may be nice to put them in the garden, I have no where that I could risk seedlings so if I do take their picture tonight I'll put them back into an even deeper pot and hope that by next year I could trust them in my overgrown patch.
Sue

[Lesley Cox]

It's worth saying that if you have bulbs to pot - or plant - it's never too late to do that, compared with NOT potting - or planting them. Better to get them into contact with moist mix or soil than to leave them indefinitely.

[Maggi Young]

Have to agree with that, Lesley. While bulbs are marvelously adapted to survive all sorts of ghastly events, it is a sad thing to find a packet of unhappy little bulbs languishing in the back of  the fridge after many months...At this time of year when many of us are receiving bulbs through the post or buying from the garden centres, always get them into a pot or something, quickly.... it is too easy to forget them if not dealt with promptly.
I was looking after my neighbour's childrens' pet rabbits at the weekend and discovered in their shed, a bag of very sorry-looking and very dead, dahlia tubers....poor things! A lesson to be learned not to procrastinate.

[Anthony Darby]

What do we want? Procrastination? When do we want it? Tomorrow!

[SueG]

Though even when I do pot them up they don't always grow - in my repotting fit I upended a pot which I'd planted a Trop. azureum, bought as a dry tuber (from a very reputable nursery) after admiring a photo of the plant grown by the BD and Maggie, at some cost. It has never grown so I upend the pot expecting to find a rotted husk, to find a plump fat tuber, no sign of growth but it looked very alive - repotted it and will obviously have to wait for another year to see if it decides to grow this time round. Presumably I did enough right to keep it alive, but something in the conditions was wrong so it didn't grow this time. Maybe it had got too dry before I bought it? Hopefully I might get a shoot and flower this next year!

Sue

[Maggi Young]

If Trop. azureum get too dry for too long ( especially out of soil) then they can enter a dormancy that is VERY HARD to break them out of. Give it a pot of very slightly  moist... only just, mind, and it may deign to wake up for you. They often send up the first sign of a spindly shoot around late October, November. If not, then just keep it ticking over, never too dry nor too damp and in a year or two or three it will suddenly decide to rejoin the land of the living. Utterly frustrating plant but SO lovely, it IS worth the fuss!

[Lesley Cox]

I was looking after my neighbour's childrens' pet rabbits at the weekend and discovered in their shed, a bag of very sorry-looking and very dead, dahlia tubers....poor things! .

That's all right Maggi. It was only dahlias

[Maggi Young]

Yeah, suppose so! Mind you, any longer and it would have needed a forensic pathologist to identify their tubers as such!

[Paul T]

Sue,

For no apparent reason my clump (yes, whole clump of multiple tubers, not just a single one) of T. tricolor in the ground skipped growing last season entirely.  Those in the pots did just fine, but the tubers in the ground just decided to have a rest.  I too expected there to be nothing left but I found a bunch of tubers when I checked, the biggest being about 3 inches wide or so.  Nothing at all last year but they're back this year (well at least some of them anyway).  We've had drought here the last few years so I expect that they dried out a litle too much at some point.  Nice to have them back this year, even if then only a fraction of the clump has grown.

So you're not alone.  T. azureum is one I have yet to acquire, despite serious lusting after it.  I do so love blue flowers, and I adore the tuberous Tropaeolum!! 

[SueG]

Sue,

For no apparent reason my clump (yes, whole clump of multiple tubers, not just a single one) of T. tricolor in the ground skipped growing last season entirely.  Those in the pots did just fine, but the tubers in the ground just decided to have a rest.  I too expected there to be nothing left but I found a bunch of tubers when I checked, the biggest being about 3 inches wide or so.  Nothing at all last year but they're back this year (well at least some of them anyway).  We've had drought here the last few years so I expect that they dried out a litle too much at some point.  Nice to have them back this year, even if then only a fraction of the clump has grown.

So you're not alone.  T. azureum is one I have yet to acquire, despite serious lusting after it.  I do so love blue flowers, and I adore the tuberous Tropaeolum!! 

This is really interesting - I have T speciosum and it began to grow this year then just disappeared and I'd assumed I'd killed it, but it is in a little bed with a couple of big roses which got very dry in May - I wonder if it might come back next year then - I shall keep my eyes open!
Thanks for all the advice
Sue

[Anthony Darby]

Nancy Robinson of Tennessee emailed this pic to me. She says "I have been out digging a gardening friend's snowdrops and found these elongated bulbs.  Why or what is this?  Is this a different way of multipling?"

[Martin Baxendale]

I've found that amongst my snowdrops too - where bulbs have been buried too deep by excessive top-dressing over the years, they grow back up towards the surface by forming their new bulbs further up the leaf bases each year until they get back to a normal level. I raised this last year on the forum and someone explained the mechanics of it - something about the centre of the shoot being an extension of the basal plate and therefore able to form a bulb further up than the original basal plate. A useful mechanism when bulbs get buried in the wild by deep leaf litter, mudslides etc.