March 2014 in the Northern Hemisphere

[Margaret]

Flowering today:
Leucojum 'Gravetye Giant'
Soldanella Spring Surprise

[fixpix]

A couple cute blooms from around my garden

Lunaria annua
Dicentra spectabilis
Ipheon uniflora
Viburnum burkwoodii
Ajuga reptans

[Jacek]

Fixpix, my spring is less advanced than in Romania! My Dicentra spectabilis is just showing up from the soil.

Jeffersonia dubia showing its buds - I like it at any stage of development. While it perfectly suites to my garden conditions, I do not have any seedlings. Fortunately, the original clumps enlarge slowly.

[Jacek]

Another plant that is just perfect for my woodland garden is Omphalodes verna. Able to survive and flower in dark shade, does not die in case of severe summer drought. Dry shade is not a problem for it. Propagates very fast, but since seedlings are rare and the vegetative growth is by creeping shoots - control is not an issue.

Perfectly hardy, though the creeping shoots need to root before winter. Otherwise they die.

I tried Omphalodes cappadocica as well, but I lost it in the first winter after planting.

[Leena]

Omphalodes verna does well here, too, and also 'Alba' is very nice.
I have tried O.cappadocica ('Starry Eyes') twice, the first on lived three years, and then I divided it and both parts died, so my mistake.
Now I have second try planted last spring, and I don't know yet if it has made it through winter.

[greenspan]

some beauties
Asarum species (presumably china); any idea what species it could be?
Aristolochia steupii (pot growing, too dangerous to make experiments outside in garden; many thanks to sergey )
Aristolochia lutea (ex italy; without problems here in garden )

[johnralphcarpenter]

Camellia japonica 'Nunncio's Carousel'

[Steve Garvie]

some beauties
Asarum species (presumably china); any idea what species it could be?
Aristolochia steupii (pot growing, too dangerous to make experiments outside in garden; many thanks to sergey )
Aristolochia lutea (ex italy; without problems here in garden )

Bizarre and wonderful!!!

[Anne Repnow]

That Asarum - whatever it is - is quite impressing! Very unusual.

1: Lilium martagon
2: Soldanella carpatica
3: Aquilegia 'Woodside variegated'
4: Plagiorhegma dubium

[fixpix]

Greenspan, I love your weird-ies
The pics made me think the blooms are huge, but they are probably tiny...
Right?

[ebbie]

Wow, what a fine Soldanella, Bolinopsis. And the Aristolochias of Greenspan are exceptional and striking!

[Maggi Young]

some beauties
Asarum species (presumably china); any idea what species it could be?

Many thanks to Pascal Bruggeman who sent this message  :
".... the Asarum of member Greenspan in the March 2014 thread is nice form of Asarum heterotropoides. Very prone to slug damage, mine were damaged a lot this year IN THE GREENHOUSE….   "

[greenspan]

@pascal bruggeman

thx maggi for pascals information. but i guess the identification might be wrong. i got this Asarum under the species-name "heterotropoides" + it seems that this plant was introduced under this name in our hobby. flora of china (FOC) describes heterotropides with "reflexed lobes"! here 2 links to photos of Asarum heterotropoides which fits the flower description about the reflexed lobes... first photo taken in Hokkaido University Botanical Garden and second photo from plantarium.ru, where russian botanists make a good work in identification of plants. the leaf shape is also different to my plant. the flowers of my plant never reflex the lobes but spreading these like a star. the flower diameter is about 3 cm. maybe it's the chinese species Asarum heterotropoides f. mandshuricum? but in FOC nothing is mentioned whether or not the chinese form shows reflexed lobes. so i have to assume, that the reflexed lobes also occur in Asarum heterotropoides f. mandshuricum.

to complete the confusion ... i got another one labelled as "heterotropoides", same leaves, same time emerging but with smaller flowers + different colour:



both plants are full hardy + no need to overwinter in greenhouse. they tolerated temperatures about -19°C.

@fixpix

huge? no...tiny? no it's matter of opinion...as i wrote, the Asarum species flowers are ~3cm in diameter, Aristolochia steupii flowers are ~2cm hight to 1cm width (open tube), Aristolochia lutea flowers are small ~less than 1 cm width but ~5-6 cm long/hight (tube).

[Maggi Young]

Hi Greenspan - I had also asked Pascal to look at the plants you'd posted  here:  http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=2475.msg148228#msg148228

Pascal has sent another note :

He writes :"I have seen the response from Greenspan and  I know some species are often confused.

 The problem is that very few are familiar with variation in the wild, particularly of widespread species and therefore focus on a very specific plant according to some “authoritative publication”. Heterotropoides and many species of the same section are widespread and variable, the closest species to heterotropoides is sieboldii, named after Von Siebold who worked in Japan. The key characters in Asarum are often situated in the flower (shape of male flowers, length ratio of style to male flower, number and shape of male flowers). The recurved or non-recurved petals are variable.

The plant on the links he posts to me look more like Asarum sieboldii which is predominantly a Japanese and Korean species.

You can see how close they all are here:
http://www.asarum-jp.com/ssc02/R16.htm

Regarding the Flora of China, there are very few genera that are treated well in there and those that do are usually written by Western taxonomist…. I use the FoC often as a start to narrow it down to a few species and then start to look up the original descriptions and additional info. I never take what is said in the FoC for granted.

I am not saying I am right but I have looked at a lot of publications for the very same reason and I came to the conclusion for myself the recurved petaled plants on an erect flower stalk are sieboldii and the ones with the non-recurved more open flowers are heterotropoides. Maculatum falls in that same group and the extremely recurved ones from that group with the hairy stems are caulescens. Which occurs in yellow through to dark purple. Sieboldii occurs from green to dark purple. They all throw up generally 2 lush leaves but the way the flowers develop is rather different, heterotropoides starts to flower before the leaves are completely unfurled, sieboldii when the leaves are almost completely unfurled. Tony Avent from Plant Delight Nursery asked Barry Yinger , one of the people studying Asarum and Barry came to the same conclusion as me: http://www.plantdelights.com/Asarum-heterotropoides-for-sale/

 But is either heterotropoides or sieboldii and my bet is on heterotropoides.

 Pascal  "

[Tasmanian Taffy]

Hi Greenspan,
just seen your pic's of Aristolochia Steupii I have never seen one before, can it be grown from seed.
Cheers John.