Allium 2009

[Carlo]

Good lord, it appears we've got to start a "job hunters" topic. I find myself in the same predicament as Mark and not as nice a one as Maggi and Ian. Not a good time of year to be looking for a position--or a good year for that matter.

And I won't see any alliums in bloom outside this forum until next season!

[Maggi Young]

Mark, you have succumbed to Facebook ( admittedly it brought us an interesting link) and Carlo is resorting to Twitter.... now, I know you Guys are having troubles... and heaven knows I wish you, and everyone else in your position, good health and full employment in 2010.... but don't you feel you must keep up certain standards even in these trying times?? I mean, Facebook and Twitter..... Really!  

[johnw]

Mark - Here are the leaves of what was id'ed as prattii. Note the date.  From your pix and Stephen's the leaves look too wide for prattii. Also a very bad shot of the base, burgundy coloration.

These may very well be the roots.

johnw - temp plummeting, already -4c at 8pm

[TheOnionMan]

Mark - Here are the leaves of what was id'ed as prattii. Note the date.  From your pix and Stephen's the leaves look too wide for prattii.

It might be too tough to tell.  I've had plants from collected locations that simply fall through the cracks, they don't meet any of the standard species descriptions.  Allium prattii is listed as having leaves that can be elliptic, and up to 7 cm wide, so maybe this one remains a mystery.  It is also possible that the whole group of wide-leaved Allium in China needs a more thorough review based on live specimens, such as what Dr. Fritsch has done in Iran, to really understand what we're looking at, possibly resulting in new species.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[TheOnionMan]

Mark, you have succumbed to Facebook ( admittedly it brought us an interesting link) and Carlo is resorting to Twitter.... now, I know you Guys are having troubles... and heaven knows I wish you, and everyone else in your position, good health and full employment in 2010.... but don't you feel you must keep up certain standards even in these trying times?? I mean, Facebook and Twitter..... Really!  

Don't get me going on Facebook... I'll try and stay on-topic with Allium from this point moving forward.  But yes, I succumbed to FaceBook, joining 350 million people in the world who participate.  I could write endless blogs and tirades about how I feel about FaceBook, why is it that such a huge volume of people in the world have joined in on this mediocre "Edsel" of "social networking", the word "Edsel" in reference to a hugely unsuccesful American car in the late 1950s ("due to it's disastrous history, the word "Edsel" has become synonymous with failure").  As an IT guy (Information Technology), I've experienced all levels of software and internet ventures, and my take on it is Facebook gets a low grade of "C" from me, surprisingly under-developed software full of bugs, interface flaws, limitations, memory leaks that eventually toasts the browser, lots of quirks, and an odd almost perverse look into other people's lives and friends that I don't necessarily want to know about, and yet the world flocks to it. And at the same time, there are some intriguing aspects of live information updates and interaction occuring through FaceBook.

Moving on, it seems in this world you're nobody unless you have a FaceBook page... all major companies now have a FaceBook representation, as well as Twitter (I draw the line at Twitter, I will never "tweet").  Even organizations like North American Rock Garden Society now have a FaceBook presence.

I'd much rather belong to something like this forum, and excellent implementation to communicate our collective true love: it's about the plants. Hurrah to SRGC!

Sorry about the off-topic post, let's move on.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[Janis Ruksans]

Another unidentified Allium from Iran S of Tazeh Qal’eh vilage in Kopet-dag. On first picture you can see how happy I'm finding this original plant (John Inghams foto) - on next foto nice leaves of not flowering plant and on third its flowerhead (stem height ~40 cm).
Janis

[TheOnionMan]

Janis, another nice Iranian allium, but as usual, so hard to put a name to them.  I want to go back to your previous posting of 4 beautiful Allium images, several of which look similar to something I grew from seed.  I asked Dr. Fritsch what he thought of my plant, and I will post my photos and his response in a separate message.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[TheOnionMan]

Here are some photos of an Allium I grew from seed, took 7 years to flower, flowered in 2008 but didn't flower in 2009.  It's a beauty to be sure.  I lost the label for the plant (crows pull them out), but as best I could tell from the keys and looking at photos, it looked very similar to a photograph in Janis' Buried Treasures book of Allium elburzense.  It appears that my plant is not elburzense, but perhaps closer to A. ellisii.  The first 3 photos show the plant at peak flowering, the 4th photo shows the inflorescence at late anthesis.

Here's what Dr. Fritsch had to say about this allium:
[It]is certainly no A. elburzense Wendelbo. I know this species from type location, it owns an ovary glossy like glass and recurved tepals. But I have no other name for your plant. It comes close to A. ellisii but the filaments are somewhat too long. Do you know the offspring of this accession?

I found a large and variable population of your "not-Allium elburzense - looks like A. ellisii" taxon growing in the botanical garden of Tehran belonging to the Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands. But nobody was able to find out the wild offspring of these plants. Perhaps even your plants trace back to the population in Tehran.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[Sinchets]

Very nice to be sure, but I am still a firm believer in the Allium (section Acanthoprasum) continuum.

[johnw]

Allium prattii is listed as having leaves that can be elliptic, and up to 7 cm wide, so maybe this one remains a mystery.  It is also possible that the whole group of wide-leaved Allium in China needs a more thorough review based on live specimens, such as what Dr. Fritsch has done in Iran, to really understand what we're looking at, possibly resulting in new species.

Mark McDonough

Mark - Its label will revert to species unkown. Thanks for the comments.

johnw

[BULBISSIME]

Allium derderianum is stuning !!

[Lesley Cox]

Mark, let me introduce you to the "Moan, Moan, Moan....." thread. Some of us could moan as an Olympic event.

[TheOnionMan]

Well, it seems that what many have been calling Allium winklerianum may not actually be that species. 

I asked Dr. Fritsch to take a look at the Pacific Bulb Society photo galleries, specifically on Allium:
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Allium

He felt that they mostly looked correctly identified, but challenged the photos of Allium winklerianum.  He said they look more like Allium pseudowinklerianum, then sent a photo of A. winklerianum representing the type species.  I have posted photos of what I thought was Allium winklerianum (is probably pseudowinklerianum, published by Dr. Reinhard Fritsch in 2005), and a photo of the true type-collection of winklerianum from Dr. Fritsch.  Regardless of the name, it's a beautiful species that is intensely fragrant.

Bulbs are available at Pacific Rim Native Plant Nursery (some of my Allium flavum var. tauricum color forms available there too, check them out, they carry good stuff).
Pacific Rim Native Plant Nursery
http://www.hillkeep.ca/bulbs%20allium%20i-z.htm

Pacific Rim description: Native to NW China, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Our plants descend from material collected by Jánis Rukšáns in the Fergana Range of Kyrgyzstan and received from Arnis Seisums in 1997 and 1998.

I wrote on my website in 2002 "I like this species a lot, as the flowers are an intense, luminous pink-purple, as well as heavily perfumed like sugar candy.  My two daughters confirmed that the flowers smell like "Pez" or "Smarties", popular hard sugar candies in the United States.

It's so hard to keep up with all these updates, and recently published updates are hard to find... thus far, I can't find the document where A. pseudowinklerianum is published on the web, I may have to pester Dr. Fritsch again.

FYI:  I no longer have Allium "winklerianum", a casualty of the record-breaking rainfall of spring and early summer (June) in 2005, or was it 2006, where lots of bulbs perished.

[Paul T]

Wow Mark, I love the broad leaved species in the background.  The leaves and buds themselves look really effective.

[TheOnionMan]

Wow Mark, I love the broad leaved species in the background.  The leaves and buds themselves look really effective.

Thanks Paul.  What you're seeing are several cultivars of Allium karataviense.  It's amazing that the same ol' greyish-mauve form has been around forever, yet in the wild the species is remarkably variable.  Finally, some fine forms are available.  Here are pictures of cultivars 'Red Globe' with ginormous (reference the movie Elf) flower heads of brooding red (an expensive thing to get).  It is larger-flowered than the recently named subspecies var. henrikii (named for Henrik Zetterlund) which has large heads of more rosey-red flowers.  The wonderful white 'Ivory Queen' is available wherever Dutch grown bulbs are sold and dirt cheap (1/2 a dollar in the US)... buy a bunch next year.  Not only is the foliage great, for a long season the seed heads are quite ornamental too.  The photo of A. karaviense 'Ivory Queen' was taken just before July 2003, with foliage and seed heads still making a statement in mid-summer.