Trillium 2009

[Guff]

Heres an update picture of my second picture that I had posted. Would next year be ok to dig them up and give these some room to grow, or should I do it now?
Thanks for info.

[Maggi Young]

I would give them another year, Guff. They'll be bigger and stronger and easier to move out next year.
You may do a little more root damge in spreading them next year, but the rhizome will be big enough to withstand a bit of stress.

[Eric Locke]

I wish I could grow Trillium. 

I just keep losing them. 

Eric

[Rodger Whitlock]

This one was bought a good few years back as Trillium underwoodii, I would be grateful if anyone could confirm this as I am not certain it's correct.

According to Plate 69 in the Case book on trilliums, it can't be T. underwoodii. It's almost certainly T. recurvatum, which I have seen in commerce mislabelled as T. undulatum in 2008 and T. catesbaei this year.

Case's book also illustrates T. lancifolium (plate 55) the nearest relative to recurvatum, and the flower form would never be mistaken for that of recurvatum.

I suspect that a wholesale grower somewhere is cranking out vast quantities of T. recurvatum but as it one of the uglier trilliums (if not the ugliest), they are peddling it under nearly any other name.

[Rodger Whitlock]

Heres an update picture of my second picture that I had posted. Would next year be ok to dig them up and give these some room to grow, or should I do it now?

If that were in my own garden, I'd definitely lift and divide that clump of seedlings. They're far too crowded. To my way of thinking, the risks associated with dividing them are less than the chance they'll crowd one another out.

Just water the clump well a day in advance, dig up the entire clump, then gently swish in water to wash away the soil, and one by one prick out the individual seedlings directly into the garden, without delay. Choose an area you can treat as a nursery bed and space them perhaps 2" apart. Water in well and if the site gets sun, shade the seedlings for a few days.

Handle the seedlings by the leaf, not the stem. If you damage the leaf you've done little harm, but if you crush the stem at the very least you will have set back the seedling badly, perhaps killed it.

According to my reading, one of the big differences between monocots and dicots is that if you damage the growing tip of a monocot root, that's it for the season. A dicot, by contrast, will simply proliferate the damaged root. Trilliums are monocots, so avoiding damage to root tips is esp. important.

[Hristo]

Cheers for the info Rodger, I have monographs on quite a few genera but sadly not Trillium. It is always a shame when suppliers feel the need to 'miss-name' a plant in order to sell it. I rather like recurvatum and given that I don't have it other than as a plant received under the underwoodii name I guess things could be worse!

[gote]

Heres an update picture of my second picture that I had posted. Would next year be ok to dig them up and give these some room to grow, or should I do it now?
Thanks for info.

I am sorry Maggie but i disagree.
I had two such clumps some years ago. I divided one of them at this stage - or slightly later and the other the following year. The one I divided gained a year until reaching flowering size.
This applied to central  Swedish climate, sandy friable soil with "woodsy" humus in it. I did loose a few when dividing but how many mature plants can one accomodate.
Göte 

[gote]

There has been something very nasty happening to many Trilliums in New Zealand over the last couple of years, and it is, apparently a serious disease. I wondered about the leaf damage to the Edinburgh erectum, in comparison to ours. Unfortunately I have no pictures of ours at present but maybe one of our local lurkers could help here, either onto this thread or to me privately so I can post them. Whatever our problem is - and I believe it has been identified - it has caused major panic and distress among local growers. There are apparently at least a few remedies available.

I suggest that you contact Carl Denton ( unless you did that already) he lost substantial parts of his collection due to a virus. carl@trilliums.co.uk
www.trilliums.co.uk
The damage in most of the posted pictures here looks to me as frost damage to the tips of leaves that were up too early.
Göte

[Anthony Darby]

I wish I could grow Trillium. 

I just keep losing them. 

Eric

Do you grow them in shade, or is it that they are eaten by slugs? South of Yorkshire they need shade but I can grow most in full sun here.

[Maggi Young]

I am sorry Maggie but i disagree.
I had two such clumps some years ago. I divided one of them at this stage - or slightly later and the other the following year. The one I divided gained a year until reaching flowering size.
This applied to central  Swedish climate, sandy friable soil with "woodsy" humus in it. I did loose a few when dividing but how many mature plants can one accomodate.
Göte 

No need to apologise,  Göte, we all have our own methods !
 I agree with you on the "how many mature plants can one accomodate?" point.... which is why I'd rather  let the seedlings fight it out amongst themselves until the biggest ones are well able to take the stresses of lifting and splitting..... and I reckon losses might be fewer than Rodger fears .

[Guff]

Thanks everyone for the help.

I dug up half of the clump.  Next year I will do the rest, playing it safe. This was my first attempt growing Trillium's from seed. I wasn't expecting so many to germinate.

[Lesley Cox]

Thanks Gote, yes, I'm pretty sure the local Trillium Group has it under control and have sent out heaps of info to members, just that mine haven't been affected and I live isolated from other gardens so feel I'm relatively safe. I believe Carl has been consulted as well.

[Rodger Whitlock]

I have monographs on quite a few genera but sadly not Trillium.

That's easily rectified. Bookfinder.com coughs up 50 copies of Case's book, most about $50CDN or more. Bookfinder.com is esp. useful because it takes into account the cost of shipping to the country you are in. It's a meta-search engine and can greatly speed up finding an affordable copy of the books you crave.

Currently $1CDN is about $0.85US, 1.25 Bulgarian lev, £0.562UK.

I resisted buying Case's book for many years, but now that I have it, it gets a surprising amount of use.

[Hristo]

Thanks again for the info Rodger.

Found quietly flowering under a labiate, T.pusillum......?

[Hristo]

Not tricky or rare, but first time flowering for me after an autumn purchase, Trillium luteum.