Northern hemisphere June 2010

[gote]

My Haberlea liked this winter but the Ramonda serbica on top was better last year.
Göte

[karel_t]

The first of my Jankaeas has started to flower.
K.

[Lesley Cox]

Cohan, if you wanted a different coloured dandelion you could try Crepis incana, a slightly shrubby, dwarfish plant with dandelion leaves but quite grey, and dandelion flowers of a clean pink. It is a popular and very attractive rock garden plant. Mostly it is said to be sterile and people propagate it from cuttings or root cuttings but one English nurseryman supplies fertile seed to the seed exchanges most years.

[Lesley Cox]

Tony, I like your rhubarb and as the flowers aren't fully out, it may be better than you're expecting. But then, I like all the Rheum genus.

[Lesley Cox]

Wild boars! Oh God! (Perhaps I should say Mein Gott, Gote, with apologies for the lack of accent marks. )

That is perfect German Lesley. Your erudition is amazing 
Göte

Thank you Gote. To be honest I wasn't sure whether to type ei or ie.

[cohan]

gote and karel--love the gesneriads..will have to test a few here..
lesley-i am finding more and more fascinating things in the asteraceae-whether or not they bear any resemblance to dandelions! -not is quite good, actually lots of interesting foliage and flowers, i have a few seedlings of various, and more seed to go in..

tony, i do like the big rhubarbs, and quite like the idea of the small ones--though disappointing to get what you didn't want--hope it was not costly...

[Stephenb]

Before we leave the Dandelion theme, here's one more ornamental one which I like. It's a ground hugging species and the contrast between the dark red leaves and the yellow flowers is fantastic (sorry, the picture below, from a slide, is a bit unclear). I got it as Taraxacum faroense, but I haven't confirmed its identity. The dark red leaves are a visually pleasing addition to mixed salads.

Cohan: The idea of introducing a mix of Dandelions into the monoculture - roadsides are yellow here too at the moment - has also occurred to me. I had a group in the garden last week and showed them pseudoroseum. I said to them - remember this plant. If you notice in 20 years time that the roadside verges have changed colour, you'll know who was responsible...

[gote]

The first of my Jankaeas has started to flower.
K.

Wow
The only one I managed to get died first winter - sitting dry under a protruding rock.
Göte

[gote]

gote and karel--love the gesneriads..will have to test a few here..

Haberlea and Ramonda are very cold hardy in my place never protected never damaged.
Göte

[TheOnionMan]

Before we leave the Dandelion theme, here's one more ornamental one which I like. It's a ground hugging species and the contrast between the dark red leaves and the yellow flowers is fantastic (sorry, the picture below, from a slide, is a bit unclear). I got it as Taraxacum faroense, but I haven't confirmed its identity. The dark red leaves are a visually pleasing addition to mixed salads.

Stephen, your first photo... is it upside down?  Unless that Allium growing next to it is in the southern hemisphere   Do you eat the red dandelion leaves?  When growing up, my neighbors who lived up on a hill with miserable poor soil where little would grow, would come down to our rich pasture bottomland conditions in our yard, where the dandelions grew gross and enormous, to harvest the leaves for salads.

For years my sole Taraxacum albidum was satisfied making one or two flowers per year, never seeding around to break the spring monotony of yellow dandelions by the millions in my lawn.  It eventually gave up the ghost.

[Stephenb]

Stephen, your first photo... is it upside down?  Unless that Allium growing next to it is in the southern hemisphere  Do you eat the red dandelion leaves?  When growing up, my neighbors who lived up on a hill with miserable poor soil where little would grow, would come down to our rich pasture bottomland conditions in our yard, where the dandelions grew gross and enormous, to harvest the leaves for salads.

For years my sole Taraxacum albidum was satisfied making one or two flowers per year, never seeding around to break the spring monotony of yellow dandelions by the millions in my lawn.  It eventually gave up the ghost.

It could well be upside down and reversed as it's from a slide, but the shot is looking vertically down above the plant. I can see that the bottom of the photo is westwards; i.e., towards Fairbanks, if that helps   I would have taken the shot from the west side of the bed, so, no it's the right way up...

The Dandelion (various species which probably weren't differentiated) were an important part of the winter/spring Mediterranean diet (wild collected in the vineyards) and was I think used in most traditional societies from Siberia to Europe to North America, including native american tribes (the Cherokee, for example), but as a food plant it is nowadays probably most associated with the French. The attached first two pictures are of a French improved cultivar "Pissenlit Coeur Plein Ameliore" which I bought as a seed packet in a French supermarket about 10 years ago. The first picture is also from a slide and is the correct way, the flowers leaning towards the sun in the south. The second picture shows this plant which has been blanched by putting a bucket over the plant in spring. Looks good, tastes good and does you good... Yes, I frequently use Dandelions including the red in spring salads and some cooked dishes too.

The final picture proves that this far north with continuous daylight we have GIANT Dandelions, so you guys shouldn't complain - it could be a lot worse. My son in the picture is over 6 ft tall (the picture was taken over 20-years ago)

I also lost T. albidum, but am trying again now (seedlings), which reminds me that white flowered T. pamiricum is about to flower, so may be back in a few days with a picture.

[TheOnionMan]

It could well be upside down and reversed as it's from a slide, but the shot is looking vertically down above the plant. I can see that the bottom of the photo is westwards; i.e., towards Fairbanks, if that helps   I would have taken the shot from the west side of the bed, so, no it's the right way up...

Okay, now that picture looks normal to me

[Stephenb]

  Can I point out that you are pointing south (not even west...). Your picture is also taken vertically as I see the gravel of your driveway in the background! 

[TheOnionMan]

Can I point out that you are pointing south (not even west...). Your picture is also taken vertically as I see the gravel of your driveway in the background! 

Okay, I'm confused, my head is reeling.  So, I'm trying various special spectacles, many powerful rosy colored ones, with which to view your rubescent taraxacums.

[TheOnionMan]

Cleome chilensis is also starting to produce flowers with real nice flowers where the purple anthers contrast nicely to the clear white petals.
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=5556.msg155155#msg155155

Meant to respond to this sooner, but that's a nifty looking Cleome... love those long purple stamens.  I had seen this species available on ChileFlora.com and wanted to order it, although being unemployed this year I held back from placing an order.

There was a time about 10 years ago I was doing some hybridization with Cleome... a fascinating and diverse genus found throughout much of the globe, although if one is to believe the new online Flora of North America, they have been relegated into about 6 separate genera.  I was able to take C. hassleriana (you know: rose queen, cheery queen, etc), a robust 5-7 leaflet species with enormous showy heads of bloom, and cross with the tiny-flowered golden yellow C. lutea (from western USA), looks like a wild mustard, with leaflets mostly in threes, occasionally 5.  Got hybrids that were dirt ugly, with big robust leaves like C. hassleriana except only 3 leaflets, and ugly few-flowered heads of whitish or pinkish flowers.  Obviously needed to go into further generations, but pollinating them is so time consuming (and pollen ready in late morning when I would be at work), that I dropped the project.  But one can dream of such "faffing" about.