Trillium 2008

[Diane Whitehead]

The VIRAGS (Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society) spring show
was this weekend. Just before closing on the second day is a good time to
ask exhibitors for some pollen. 

Look at the leaves on this kurabayashi.  I think - I was so excited about being
given some of its pollen that I didn't really look at the label - I was too busy
bargaining with the exhibitor who wanted to know what he was going to get in
exchange.  <sigh> I promised him my first-born (seedling, from the cross),
a couple of seedling albidums and an ovatum maculatum. You can see how
much I wanted that pollen.

I've pollinated my spotted leaf albidum, and my minuscule T. parviflorum (the
one being shown up by some anemone nemorosa. Results expected in 2015.

[mark smyth]

Rob, I could be wrong but I dont think those large Trilliums will tolerate small pots for long

Diane is parviflorum always that small?

[Diane Whitehead]

I keep waiting for my parviflorum to get bigger, but it hasn't.  It's been in
the same spot, flowering every year, since 2003.  I don't think it is starved,
as the rivales growing next to it are normal-sized.  Case wrote that is varies
greatly in size, so I guess I have one of the shorties.

I haven't seen parviflorum in the wild, probably because I usually just zoom
through its territory on my way to the Siskiyous.  I should make a point of
looking for it this year.

[Anthony Darby]

Keeping trilliums in pots is rather like keeping a goldfish in a bowl. It will grow and look happy but will be limited in size by the size of the pot. They don't like repeated disturbance but can be divided without any problem: best while still in growth so they can recover before the autumn. Tipping a plant out of a pot to plant it out or pot it on does not constitute disturbance. Species like grandiflorum should double in size each year in the garden. Even luteum and other sessile spp. should increase. If it remains as a single stem for more than a couple of years try cutting the rhizome in half behind the main bud.

[Lesley Cox]

I have to endorse Anthony's comments about plant size being related to the size of the growing space. Here in NZ we plant out all trilliums and each year they do indeed, double in size, or nearly so, so that after a few years in the garden a clump of T. luteum might have 20 flower stems. A worthwhile goal too, as it so beautifully perfumed, more so in the clump obviously, than in a single bloom. Foliage of T. luteum varies quite a lot and so your darkly marked plant is just an attractive variation Rob.

It seems a shame to me that someone would actually go so far as to expect (or demand) material in exchange for pollen. I suppose everything has its price to some people, but unless the pollen is on a plant which is part of some exclusive and potentially money-making breeding programme, it seems to be very mean-spirited, like asking someone visiting one's garden to pay for a glass of water or the use of the loo.

T. parviflorum as I know it, is about 20-25cms in height and the flower is maybe 6cms across. But I only know it from a single plant which I babysat (trilliumsat) for a few months last year, before a friend was able to import it to Australia.

[Brian Ellis]

If it remains as a single stem for more than a couple of years try cutting the rhizome in half behind the main bud.

I have heard a nurseryman talk about scoring his Trillium rhizomes, was this what he meant (far too busy gossiping about a huge number of things to have been able to pin him down!).

[Paul T]

Brian,

Scoring I think means cutting part way into the rhizome to interrupt the auxin flow (auxins are the chemicals that a growing shoot produces to suppress other shoots so that it has no competition).  By interrupting these chemicals dormant growth points "behind" the cut should activate, in some plants there could be quite a few.  If the Trillium rhizome gets big enough the distance from the growing point can be sufficient that the back end of the rhizome will produce offsets anyway (I had 7 appear over a couple of years on a cuneatum a few years back), but scoring or cutting the rhizome completely help to activate dormant buds that are behind the cut.

Rob,

That grandiflorum rosea is absolutely beautiful!!!!!

Diane,

That parviflorum is just so cute!! 

[Maggi Young]

I only wish that all Trilliums would make this wondrous rate of growth here 

[kirsitn]

Nice luteum! Here's another kurabayashii alongside an albidum. The kurabayashii is flowering for the first time and has also doubled the number of stems since last year, so I am quite happy with it! 

[johnw]

A couple of Trilliums emerging with interesting foliage tonight - T. cuneatum & T. albidum selections by the late Don Armstrong of Vancouver, BC.

I was reminded to take a look at these as a friend botanizing in North Carolina emailed a photo of a beautiful dark pink T. catesbei he found, notably with flower erect and well above the foliage. Also a beautiful silver leafed T. cuneatum. I will ask him to post these pictures when he returns home.

johnw

[Paul T]

John,

That dark leafed cuneatum is a stunner.  My cuneatum has markings on the leaf but not even CLOSE to that.  Yours is very special!!


Regarding multiplying..... mine generally do not multiply much at all, just this one cuneatum that went crazy over 2 growing season.  I eventually lifted it to have a look at it and the rhizome was around 5 inches long in a great wedge shape.... the back end of the rhizome was around 3 inches wide, and the back curve of the rhizome was probably closer to 4.  The new offsets formed along the back edge of the rhizome, at the furthest point from the growing shoot.  It was amazing to me how it did this and I think I am just lucky.  I am wondering whether it maybe just got big enough that the main shoot was far enough from the other end for the apical dominance of the growth point to no longer affect the other end of the rhizome, so the new shoots emerged.  That's my theory anyway, as it was clear that all the new shoots were at the furthest point from the actual growth.

Also, those who aren't fully familiar with Trilliums...... a happy Trillium may produce multiple shoots from a single growth point.  The cuneatum in question of mine always produces at least 3 shoots from the main growth point, all of which flower.  Some years there is another smaller shoot that doesn't flower which comes up with the 3 main ones.  All of these shoots come from the same growth point, they are not offsets.  Originally I thought mine was multiplying until I read about the multiple shoots and had a close look at mine.  They clearly all emerged from the same point

Just thought that this was worth mentioning in case there were readers who weren't aware that multiple leaves/flowers could be produced from just a single point.

[Diane Whitehead]

I thought it was impossible for sessiles to cross with pedicillate trilliums, but
that doesn't seem to be invariably true. 

New studies of relationships within the genus show that grandiflorum and
ovatum are related to sessiles.

Perhaps they are like Helleborus niger which seems to be a "universal mother"
to many hellebore species.

I tried crossing ovatum with rivale last year, with no success. Crocker and Kline
of Siskiyou Rare Plants Nursery had found hybrids in the wild and had produced
hybrids themselves.  They did the cross both ways.  However, I read recently
that the offspring looked like the mothers, so I doubt the reputed hybridity.

This year I am crossing ovatum with some dark-flowered Western U.S. sessiles -
kurabayashi and chloropetalum.  I expect that any hybrid offspring will be
revealed by colour.

[Diane Whitehead]

Rob,

I wrote in my breeding book that trilliums are protandrous - the pollen is ready before the stigma is receptive. I did not make a note of where I found that information, and it does not seem to be true for all trilliums.

I have just been out to check a couple of my trilliums.  I can stick my finger in an opening ovatum bud and get pollen on it.  Also, there is still lots of pollen all over the anthers on flowers open a couple of days.

Albidum has long anthers with a yellow rim along each side.  I couldn't get any pollen on my finger though I tried many flowers.  However, I picked anthers two days ago and left them in a dish in my kitchen. They shrivelled a bit and have released pollen, not just to my finger, but there is also a layer of pollen in the bottom of the dish.

I will try to remember to watch to see when the pollen is available on the plants.

I have never seen a luteum in flower, so I don't know whether it is similar to ovatum in pollen release.

[Anthony Darby]

Here is my best form of Trillium grandiflorum f. roseum. Its bud starts, and the flower opens, this colour.

[Susan]

That is gorgeous.  I am envious.

Susan