Erythronium 2016

[Cfred72]

Erythronium californicum 'Withe Beauty' is in bloom as Magniola, these are bulbs purchased last year in November.

[Cfred72]

Erythronium 'Pagoda' in a week's time rushed to open.
It's really fast one. 

[Maggi Young]

Experts can tell me if it is a hybrid of Erythronium californicum x tuolumense as E. 'Pagoda'?

 Yes, it is - same as 'Citronella' too.

[Cfred72]

Merci Maggi, 

[Hoy]

Erythronium dens-canis , a double one which appeared among the others.

... and a white one.

[Ian Y]

The Erythronium krylovii I showed a week ago is now in full flower.

[David Nicholson]

That's a cracker Ian.

[illingworth]

It sure is a cracker, David.

Ian, our season is a month behind yours and this is photo is from May 2015,. We grew it from seed received as E. siberica sent by Olga in Russia.

Do you know where siberica  ends and krylovii   begins or what distinguishes them?

- Rob

[Tristan_He]

Erythronium hendersonii





Erythronium revolutum

[Steve Garvie]

Based on growth over the last few years I thought that perhaps I had found the ideal place in my garden to grow both Erythronium grandiflorum and montanum. I started with a small bulb of each and this year both produced two flowering shoots. They grow in a well-drained but organic rich acidic raised bed which is shaded by the house in winter but receives sun from mid-February onwards. This seems to keep them cold over Winter but with rapid warming in early Spring. Last year I got seed from my montanum, a plant I have never succeeded with before. This year the shoots came up in both species but I noted some initial leaf damage that I had thought was due to slugs/snails. I used slug pellets and had assumed that the problem was covered. A few days ago I was horrified to note that the flower buds on both species had been badly damaged by something. The damage was extensive and there were no slime trails. Apart from the flower buds the leaves had also been badly nibbled and I noted similar damage on a nice plant of Erythronium Ardovie Bliss. I can find no evidence of any caterpillars. The damage looks nothing like that made by Vine Weevils and I am sure this is not slug/snail damage. I enclose some images of the damaged montanum -does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be doing this?

[johnralphcarpenter]

Leaf cutting bees?

[Maggi Young]

Ian, our season is a month behind yours and this is photo is from May 2015,. We grew it from seed received as E. siberica sent by Olga in Russia.

Do you know where siberica  ends and krylovii   begins or what distinguishes them?

- Rob

I think that one paper ( in Russian)  states that krylovii only applies to a white form - but others seems to hold that other colours can  be involved.  From what we have here I can say that  krylovii only has plain leaves, while sibiricum can have quite a lot of mottling.  And in the coloured forms of krylovii, viewed from above, the central white section in the throat is distinctly  visible. In  sibiricum there may be a white central area to the throat of the flower but it is never visible from the outside.
 I think Ian may illustrate this in  the most  recent Bulb Log. .......
 http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2016Apr201461149617BULB_LOG_1616.pdf   

Of course if the paper   mention states krylovii is only white   then the coloured version needs another name - but I think there is some confusion generally about this - so calling the coloured form krylovii is at least a "shorthand"  meantime to distinguish it from sibericum, from which it is clearly different.

[Ian Y]

Steve, we have had similar damage in the past and I discovered it was the caterpillar of a moth, it lives underground by day and eats its way through the night and seems especially partial to Erythroniums.

[Diane Whitehead]

Climbing cutworms, which are moth caterpillars, are active here all winter.  They eat at night,
and hide in leaf litter or just under the soil during the day.  In spring they pupate and
metamorphose into moths in summer.

[illingworth]

Thank you Maggi  for the full reply and pointing out the Bulb Log for April which I should have seen but missed.   E. sibericum is the best and easiest erythronium in our garden. Other species persist but are slow to increase in size or multiply.  A hard winter with little snow will kill one and two year seedlings  so we depend on several years of good snow cover to get them closer to flowering. Once they start to flower they appear to withstand our climate with no difficulty, not always flowering but at least not dying.