Trillium 2009

[Michael J Campbell]

Next lot

[ashley]

Lovely stuff Michael.  I particularly like the speckled & veined ones.
Are they all in (big?) pots, and in the open or under cover?

[David Nicholson]

Lovely pics folks. Trillium is a genus I haven't dabbled with yet I should perhaps give it a try.

[Michael J Campbell]

Lovely stuff Michael.  I particularly like the speckled & veined ones.
Are they all in (big?) pots, and in the open or under cover?

Ashley, I have them in pots and in the open ground and have several thousand tubers. They are one one of my favourite plants.

[Michael J Campbell]

Lovely pics folks. Trillium is a genus I haven't dabbled with yet I should perhaps give it a try.

David I can send you some tubers when they go dormant if you like.

[Robin Callens]

Michael,

I grow many Trillium species, I have difficulties with T. undulatum, T. petiolatum and ... T. rivale. What's your secret?

Robin

[Michael J Campbell]

Michael,

I grow many Trillium species, I have difficulties with T. undulatum, T. petiolatum and ... T. rivale. What's your secret?

Robin

Robin,neglect is what they get here, those planted in the garden get no attention at all, while most of the potted plants are in the same pots that the seed was sown in. When they get too big for the pot they are potted on without disturbing the tubers. I think they like company but no disturbance. When I remember they get fed with liquid tomato feed and when they go dormant the pots are placed under a bench outside until I see growth the following spring.  They like a little lime in the compost which is J.I.no 2 with a handful of grit and peat added.

[Paul T]

Michael,

Glorious!!  1, 2, 4, 5 and particularly 8 and 9 stand out for me.  T. rivale is such a good do-er here too, but predominantly whites with minor spotting as yet (although still waiting to see what emerges from seed from you a couple of years ago... when they get to flowering size).  Do you have the veined leaf types in flower as well?

[annew]

Wonderful assortment of T rivale Michael 

[Lesley Cox]

Lovely pics folks. Trillium is a genus I haven't dabbled with yet I should perhaps give it a try.

How's your bank balance David? 

[Rodger Whitlock]

Trillium rivale, A few pics showing the variation in flower shape and colour.

All are within the normal range of variation of T. rivale. The last is close to 'Purple Heart'.

I grow many Trillium species, I have difficulties with T. undulatum, T. petiolatum and ... T. rivale. What's your secret? ... Waregem, Belgium

T. undulatum is a plant impossible to grow in gardens. Though native over a large part of eastern North America, it demands rather uncommon conditions usually described as "very acid bog" or something along those lines. Plants in commerce of this trillium are invariably wild-collected, and gardeners sympathetic to plant conservation issues will refrain from buying them no matter how strong their desire for this beautiful trillium.

It's the old story "many have tried, none have succeeded."

T. rivale, on the other hand, is quite an easy plant under the right conditions. In the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon and northern Califonia, it grows by the miilions. It is not a rare plant, neither in nature nor in gardens. Along the Illinois River, which winds around the southern and western base of  , it is a common plant.

Given that Robin Callens is in Belgium, I wonder if the issue is an overly wet summer climate. Here in Victoria, BC, where the summers are invariably bone dry for months on end (as they are in the Siskiyous), T. rivale is an easy plant in the open garden. As this little trillium also takes well to pot culture, perhaps Robin Callens would have more success growing it in pots protected from summer rain. It's not a Central Asian tulip, however; it merely wants "dry", not "dry and hot", in summer.

The rhizomes of T. rivale burrow into the earth by growing at a steep angle so each year's growth of the rhizome takes it a little ways further down. It's best grown in deep pots, but beware planting young seedlings too deep.

A number of forms of T. rivale have been given cultivar names over the years: 'Purple Heart', 'Del Norte' (which is masquerading as T. ovatum × rivale these days), and 'Vern Ahier', distinguished by the circular form of the flowers with tepals overlapping to form a nearly hemispherical bowl, the interior of the flower being white with red speckling.

The 'Del Norte' form, a supposed hybrid, show no sign of hybridity with T. ovatum, neither in leaf shape, post-pollination color change, nor flower shape. It is, however, considerably larger than the usual T. rivale, about twice the stature, and grows with great vigor, setting enormous amounts of viable seed. It self-seeds in my own garden and is close to being weedy. I speculate that it is a polyploid, pure T. rivale, rather than a hybrid.

For those interested in growing pots of T. rivale for show purposes, be aware that individual specimens vary widely in their performance in pots. Some grow in pots like gangbusters, others sulk, don't flower as well, and suffer rot under conditions where the best forms don't turn a hair.

Selected forms of T. rivale are easily propagated by division. If the rhizome is planted shallowly, it readily forms small secondary shoots. In the spring right after flowering, you can lift the parent rhizome, pick off all the offsets that have a leaf, replant the parent and the offsets immediately, in confidence that they will re-establish. A strong, healthy parent rhizome can be denuded of offsets every two or three years. I am working on establishing a drift of the 'Vern Ahier' form using this technique as part of my program of wretched excess in the garden. 

[ian mcenery]

Here a little plant flowering in the garden. The plant seems of a deeper colour in the flesh.Perhaps even having a strawberry base colouring

Trillium rivale Winifred Murray

[David Nicholson]

Lovely colour Ian.

[maggiepie]

Gorgeous Trilliums Michael, I particularly like the pink veined ones.

[Paul T]

.......  part of my program of wretched excess in the garden. 

Roger,

Ah, nice to see it isn't just me that has this program established, although mine isn't excess by way of drifts of things but rather by way of putting twice as many plants in the area as is physically possible to fit!!