South African bulbose plants 2008

[BULBISSIME]

Very nice and unusual !
Pete, your plants looks very healthy !
Thank's,
Fred

[Lesley Cox]

And all that wonderful pollen!

[Pete Clarke]

Very nice and unusual !
Pete, your plants looks very healthy !   Thanks,
Fred

Thanks Fred. These are some years old now & not as vigorous as they used to be. However I have 100's of seedlings coming on (but rather slow.) I have plants of a Massonia spec. which looks like pustulata in leaf but the flower "bud" is different and not ready to open yet. I will post a pic. in due course. I would love to get more species, particularly the small ones as seen on Paul's Wisley log.

[Paul T]

Pete,

Great pic of a great plant.  Very, very cool.

[Michael]

My seedlings are also emerging now! They are very tiny at the moment, but i am hoping to see them improving in the coming weeks! I have heard that some of these are actualy pollinated by rodentia mammals. I find this very unusual!

[David Nicholson]

Here's a pic of one of my three pots of Lapeirousia divaricata now showing some 17cm of leaf growth. I still wonder if I should have left them out of the 'September shower' and started them into growth a little later but so far they are looking very healthy!

Incidentally I sent seed to the Exchange but I notice Stuart has listed them as Anomatheca divaricata but my check on IPNI says Lapeirousia is a valid name.

I did want to try some different stuff this year even though my greenhouse is really set up for Primula growing with top vents open all year round and odd panes of glass replaced with plastic mesh. I know they are not all South African but so far I have good growth on the following: Lachanalia uniflora; Geisshoriza monanthus; Polyxena corymbosa; Calochortus uniflorus; Babiana cederbergensis; Babiana nana; Moraea tripetala; Morae macrocarpa; Moraea calcicola and Habranthus martinezii. Watch this space!!

 

[Paul T]

David,

Not sure about those particular species of Babiana as I haven't grown those, but all the others grow fine outside here with no protection.  Most of the Babiana I have tried do so as well, but they can get some frost damage in some species.  None of those are cold sensitive at my level of cold anyway.

[David Nicholson]

Paul, can you remind me please, what temperatures do you get in Winter?

[Paul T]

David,

Sorry, I get to -8'C or so most winters.  Not that cold in the grand scheme of things, but cold enough for us.    How does that rate compared to you?

[David Nicholson]

Thanks Paul, being only 12 miles or so from the coast it's rare to get a really hard frost here and I suppose -8C would be a really hard one.

[Paul T]

David,

We get lots of frosts here, could possibly find out how many nights below zero we get on average if you're interested?   find that -5'C seems to be a turning point for a lot of plants.... i.e they remain undamaged until we get below -5 and then start suffering.  Some things die back to the ground at that point, and some things just die.    The mornings below that tend to be frozen until late morning, with some shaded areas holding frost until early afternoon (not necessarily in my garden, but frost pockets around the area etc).  I'd call them hard frosts, but I would imagine a lot of those way up north towards the arctic would be calling it beach weather! 

[David Nicholson]

Paul my first look out of the window in the mornings tells me if we have have had frost or not. If there is frost on the greenhouse roof or the lawn most of it will have gone by around 0930.

[Hans J]

here some flowers from today :

Massonia spec.
Massonia jasminiflora
Massonia pustulata
Massonia pustulata double head
Massonia pustulata close up
Tulbaghia simmlerii f. alba
Tulbaghia simmlerii f. alba close up

[Alberto]

Hans, you are really a keen gardener and plantsman! Bravo

Alberto from a snowy North Italy

 

[David Nicholson]

Lovely plants Hans and great pictures too.