January 2016 in the Southern Hemisphere

[Jupiter]

HA! only if you slip in the bath trying to get a better look. Here's another shot.





Parsla your garden looks quite green and lush compared with mine! We had a big storm last night and 12mm of lovely rain! I was prepared...

[Lesley Cox]

Since buying a smart phone before Christmas, I seem to have developed a really bad habit of looking at emails there and not answering them because the screen is so small compared with my PC and thinking I'll get back to that later and contribute the odd comment or picture, then not doing it. So here at last are some pictures of things that have been really good over recent weeks.

First, two pics of my neighbours, really friendly and happy to come for their noses to be scratched. They have a pleasant milky scent, as well as that other scent of course.

Lobelia linnaeoides is a tiny native lobelia (I think it's called something else now ) and I love its tiny apron flowers over foliage that it is small and with no height at all that it's almost invisible. On the right is one of the seedlings from Wim B's Pinguicula grandiflora

Lewisias have been very good this year, now for the second batch of flowers and I've been able to get a lot of seed too, more than ever before. In fact the whole seed thing is almost overwhelming and I have seeds over every table and bench in the house, in ever cup, saucer and almost coming out my ears!

More seed in this and 4 more fat pods of Podophyllum hexandrum. Just half ready yet, they'll go tomato red when fully ripe. I've never before had more than a single pod.

[Lesley Cox]

Misfired there and put up the wrong pic. The Podophyllum in flower here. Then the fruit.

Two excellent Dianthus for a biggish trough are D. erinaceus (syn webbianus?) and D. haematocalyx v. pindicola. Again, both are making some seed. I've had the parent of erinaceus since 1966 and the ACW collection in Turkey that year. The parent came to Dunedin with me, lifted from the garden and sitting on the front seat of my car, about 60cms in diameter. Incredibly it survived but died about 5 years later after giving some seeds. The other, I grew from seed from the  nice man whose name I forget at the moment, at a nursery near Pershore in the UK, not far from the AGS centre. As I admired it, he said, "lots of seed there, help yourself." So I did.

I have some lovely Androsaces at present. They are doing so well in the washtub troughs, very compact and enjoying good drainage and high grit content. The first of these I had from Tabor as A. mariae but it isn't, having much larger rosettes but very compact and tight. The flowers are not white as in mariae but on short stems, pink and not unlike those of sarmentosa but the plant is so much smaller and tighter. It is very nice indeed. Nearby is A. jacquemontii another tight, woolly cushion.

[bimison]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the club, thought I'd post something to break the ice.

I live in Mount Macedon in Victoria and have a ever growing passion for rare bulbs. I've much to learn from you all, reading recent posts has been a great help.

That's it for now!

Brock.

[t00lie]

Misfired there and put up the wrong pic. The Podophyllum in flower here. Then the fruit.

Two excellent Dianthus for a biggish trough are D. erinaceus (syn webbianus?) and D. haematocalyx v. pindicola. Again, both are making some seed. I've had the parent of erinaceus since 1966 and the ACW collection in Turkey that year. The parent came to Dunedin with me, lifted from the garden and sitting on the front seat of my car, about 60cms in diameter. Incredibly it survived but died about 5 years .

You are so ahead compared to here Lesley as my D.erinaceus is still in bud.

The fruits of this coral Podophyllum that flowered back in early November took a while to mature however they are just turning and I recently felt plenty of seed in each pod .

The Otago Lily Society have a show in South Dunedin this weekend and as I was up that way on business I went along for a look ...no pics but saw some stunning blooms and they had a couple of well stacked sales tables that I helped lighten .......

[Jupiter]

Lesley, lovely plants you're posting. I like the Dianthus and the Androsace. Those are new species to me, I"m off to read about them.

Little Thymus 'Elfins' is enjoying summer, and makes me smile every time I walk up through the rock garden.

[fermi de Sousa]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the club, thought I'd post something to break the ice.

I live in Mount Macedon in Victoria and have a ever growing passion for rare bulbs. I've much to learn from you all, reading recent posts has been a great help.

Brock.

Hi Brock,
Nice to see another Victorian on the Forum.
Being in Mt Macedon you will of course be familiar with Stephen Ryan's "Dicksonia Rare Plants Nursery" which is a great source for rare bulbs. Also consider joining the Alpine Garden Society, Vic Group, which meets in Olinda on a monthly basis. And of course there is the The Bulb Society which meets in Mt Waverley (I think).
cheers
fermi

[Lesley Cox]

Sorry Jamus but that's not Thymus 'Elfin' which is a small cushion, tight and non-blooming. It's only when it makes the sport that it becomes like yours and creeps around. Here's 'Elfin' now and some others.

I got stopped in my tracks when putting these up a couple of nights ago. Everything went black on screen and then I had a box saying "Factory Burn-in" and some other stuff. Only way I could get rid was to turn off at the wall and it was still there when I turned on again later. Roger has fixed it for now.

Picture 3 of this batch is another wonderful thyme which I bought as "lemon" thyme but although the foliage is yellowish green, the scent is of the really sweet thyme which I had once as serpyllum so I thinks this is a form of that. One day I could smell the lovely scent as I walked down the garden plant and then found it was so strong because rabbits had been clawing it to pieces over night. It was easily rescued by potting up 25 pieces and replanting the rest. It flowers amazingly and falls over the little limestone wall. Lemon thyme is, I think, T. citriodorus and has green and cream variegated foliage, an upright bushlet, nothing like this one.

Campanulas are very good this year and this is C. x pulloides 'G F Wilson' which is an old plant but excellent for a sunny rock garden or wall.

[Lesley Cox]

Still with campanulas, these first two are (but I may have got them round the wrong way) C. pulla x zoysii and C zoysii x pulla, both easy plants and loving gritty troughs. I think the deep coloured one may be the zoysii  x pulla but I'm not sure.

Now my photo processing programme has seized up (PhotoFiltre) so remaining campanulas will have to wait.

Later - Here we go again. Campanula arvatica is a neat little mat, as low as possible and loves to move about (as do all the creeping campanulas, here this year, some distance away next year. They seem to hate being confined so that if you are growing them in troughs, those need to be quite large ones.). There's a lovely white form of arvatica too, but I lost that a few years ago. Then C. 'Mist Maiden,' a low mat probably with some C. rotundifolia in it but the flower stem grow to about 30 cms. I don't mind that as the flowers seem to dance above the foliage and are really delightful in the slightest breeze.

A Campanula relative, Codonopsis vincaeflora (as I have it. I believe it's renamed as something else). This is a little twining plant and here is supported by the last picture in this posting (below). It attaches to anything at all that is nearby. I hope for seed this year as it's a real little charmer which everyone wants, growing from a smallish, fleshy white tuber.

[Lesley Cox]

A warm welcome to the Forum Brock. I'm sure I went to Mt Macedon one day a few years ago, with Otto and Fermi , and to visit a Hellebore nursery. I remember beautiful plants and charming people and road-killed kangaroos in quantity on the road! I hope you have lots of fun here. I certainly do.

Right, two plants to finish this marathon. Both are grown from seed from Tabor, and sown in our winter 2013. They have climbed mightily on a conifer trunk and they cling onto the rough bark with tightly curled tendrils though I've had to staple the thin stems to the trunk because we've had terrible winds though this last spring and are still having them quite often. Anything climbing has been blown down and out several times. I am delighted with the soft pink Mutisia spinosa and it is more or less as I'd expected. Only a handful of flowers for this first flowering. But the other, M. decurrens is a great thrill, really spectacular. A much larger flower (about 7cms across) brilliant orange and so far I've counted 22 buds. The second picture of decurrens shows flowers coming from the left whereas the visible foliage on the right is from spinosa. These are the first to open. Both species are making masses of new shoots at the base and even climbing into the little wire anti-rabbit fence. Like other southern South American climbers they love a cool, shaded position and plenty water, unusual for daisies.

[Jupiter]

Thanks for the info re Thymus 'Elfin', it came from Otto as Elfin and I didn't know it was a sport which was prone to revert. I like it anyway!

[Otto Fauser]

A warm welcome Brock from another bulb enthusiast to a very friendly Forum with much knowledge to share . Are you the same Brock who plays the contrabassoon in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra ?

[Parsla]

Hello all, and an especially warm hello to Brock - i only started a few months ago so easy to relate to you in breaking the ice.

The thymus elfin and the sport are both very attractive aren't they. Also Lesley's Thymus 'not sure'. I'm surprised the rabbits eat the thyme - the varmints this way seem to prefer unscented fare.

The garden is such that I am struggling to find much worth showing. Some lovely shrubs but no bulbs to speak of. Excepting a ilium that opened today: L. speciosum album, which came via shirley and jane tonkin.

Jacqui.

[astragalus]

Wonderful photos, Lesley.  You can certainly see the zoysii in that campanula.  Is it equally irresistable to slugs??

[Jupiter]

Yes I have been drooling over Lesley's campanula pictures as well. I'm a bit sad because I lost a my C. pulla and one of my C. cochlearifolia. I would dearly love to grow these but the heatwave conditions were just too much for them. I am planning a new crevice bed with more afternoon shade, and I'm hoping to use some tall standing stones on the western side to give more shelter.

I'm thinking of placing an order with Jelitto for Leucogenes grandiceps and a few other species. Is anyone interested in combining and order to share postage (and seeds?) Jelitto portions are huge and the cost relatively high, so it makes sense to share the cost and the spoils. Message or email me if you're interested and we'll put together a list.