Trillium 2011

[kalle-k.dk]

Many of my early flowering Trillium has flower or bud. I have not lost any of my Trillium. I've Trillium rivale on several places in my garden and they have all buds. There are several who have problems with growing Trillium rivale outside here in Denmark and therefore they grow them in pots and lose them. I do not think they grow very well in pots, maybe they have it too wet and too cold. I grow my rivale outside in both sun and shade and in a well-drained peat with plenty of humus (old leaves) Many of my Trillium apetalon has flower and there is a great variety in colour and leaves size. I bought my white form as Trillium smallii alba, but there is not described a white form of smallii and therefore I think it's Trillium apetalon alba. Several Trillium sow them self in my garden e.g. I have two plants of a plant as I got as Trillium chloropetalum giganteum and for three years ago the came over 100 seedling around them, none have flowered yet but I hope they will do it next year.

[Knud]

Mark and Karl, I took "account" of the trilliums yesterday, and the only ones that have not shown yet are T. grandiflorum and T. sulcatum. They are normally quite late, so hopefully they will turn up eventually.

My experience with T hibbersonii is that it is was very happy in the small but deep trough it was in for several years, and now spare plants from last years division that ended up in nothing but a shallow (4 cm) tray, really, are now up and blooming. I do not have experience with larger trilliums in pots, are they possibly less happy "contained".  It could be, of course, that hibbersonii is the exception and just feels at home in our mild and wet west-coast climate, wherever we put it.

By the way, Karl, our hibbersonii hails from Denmark, we bought it from Sven Aage Askjaer at his Hvidbjerg Planteskole, - a very nice garden and nursery.

Knud

[Susan Band]

Mark, Were your Trilliums in pots? I found last year those I had in boxes outside all were very badly damaged or killed. In the ground they are totally hardy. This year I learned from my mistakes and brought the boxes inside and covered them with insulation, all were fine this year.
Susan

[gote]

I have tried T rivale about three times in the open. It always died the first winter.
Apetalon is also diffcult to keep alive as is catesbaei.
Both die back in cold winters.
Also I am unable to grow sessile Trilliums from the American south. Even if they survive the winter cold I loose them in a year or two. I think my climate is wrong.
Of course Denmark is three.four zones warmer than my place.
I saw the first staring today. Angustipetalon.
Cheers
Göte   

[John Aipassa]

I am late with taking pictures. But here is one of my kurabayashii.

Cheers,

[johnw]

we bought it from Sven Aage Askjaer at his Hvidbjerg Planteskole, - a very nice garden and nursery.Knud

Knud - I thought Svend-Aage had retired but I see his website is still up and running. He had one of the most delectable list of goodies anywhere so glad to see he's still active.  

www.kalmiopsis.dk

Some really hard to find plants there.

johnw

[mark smyth]

Susan they were in a mixture of pots troughs and raised beds. I think the problem in the troughs is after a big freeze. As the troughs defrost the centre stays frozen and the outside in thawed but no way out for the water

[Knud]

John, we visited Svend Aage's nursery eight years ago, more or less by chance and somewhat late in his season. He still he had quite a selection, though, and we came away with some treasures, one of which was Northern Labrador Tea (Rhododendron tomentosum v. subarcticum). We enjoyed a nice walk around his garden, and received kind and generous advice on many plants.

Knud

[jshields]

Out in my patch of woods, the Trillium cuneatum (from North Carolina) and T. sessile (from Southern Indiana) are in bloom.  Some of the TT. erectum album and simile (Tennessee and North Carolina) are up and showing buds, too.  I don't see any of the T. erectum from Canada so far.  The local native T. recurvatum are up, but the buds are still cloaked in green sepals.  Most T. grandiflorum are not up yet, but one precocious little clump is up and in bloom.

Jim

[John Aipassa]

Out in my patch of woods, the Trillium cuneatum (from North Carolina) and T. sessile (from Southern Indiana) are in bloom.  Some of the TT. erectum album and simile (Tennessee and North Carolina) are up and showing buds, too.  I don't see any of the T. erectum from Canada so far.  The local native T. recurvatum are up, but the buds are still cloaked in green sepals.  Most T. grandiflorum are not up yet, but one precocious little clump is up and in bloom.

Jim

Hi Jim,

Any chance of uploading some pictures of these Tennessee and NC erectum album and simile later on? I would love to see what these 'original' plants from the Great Smokey Mountains look like. The garden specimens are often hybrids.

My Canadian erectums are up and almost flowering. Big plants with big flowers. They were a gift from Kristl Walek.

Best,

[jshields]

Hi John and all,

My Canadian erectum came from Kristl as well.  Today, they are up just a bit, and they look somewhat stunted.  They seem not to be completely comfortable down here in Indiana.  We'll see how they look next week.

I have pictures of T. erectum album and T. simile from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, taken in situ.  I'll hunt some out and post them here.  The specimens transplanted into my garden (under a National Park Service research permit) do not grow as large as they did in the Park, at least not so far, after one to three years in my beds.  I am concerned about the effects of our climate on them.  If you move the T. erectum album from the pass at 6000 ft down to near Gatlinburg at 1600 ft, they seem to die.  Based on amounts of DNA in the cell nuclei, simile seem to be different from erectum album; but Richard Vagner and I think that what you see between Gatlinburg and the Pass (Newfound Gap) is a cline made up of a hybrid swarm connecting the two species.  We do not yet have the kind of data that I think would unequivocally support that hypothesis, since we still lack DNA sequence data.

By the way, Trillium, like Paris, have huge amounts of DNA per cell nucleus: 110 to 130 picograms per nucleus.  Ben Zonneveld did the DNA measurements on our specimens, and formal publication will depend on when Ben feels comfortable with the data.  I tend to always want more data.....

Jim

[John Aipassa]

Hi John and all,

.....but Richard Vagner and I think that what you see between Gatlinburg and the Pass (Newfound Gap) is a cline made up of a hybrid swarm connecting the two species.  We do not yet have the kind of data that I think would unequivocally support that hypothesis, since we still lack DNA sequence data...

Hello Jim,

So there isn't an elevation 'mark' where you can find both species together in the same spot? If they where two distinct species this might be possible or not? Is it just the National Park population of erectum album that is altitude sensitive or does that count for erectum album in general? And what about simile? Does it linger or die when you move them up to higher altitudes?

Interesting stuff. I am curious about Ben's findings.

Cheers,

[jshields]

In the field, Richard and I judged "simile" vs. "erectum album" on the ratio of petal width to petal length.  I spent a day on my hands and knees in the rain and snow one April  a couple years ago, measuring petals with a millimeter ruler.  Narrower petals = erectum album; broader petals = simile.  There was no place where there were two distinct types and no intermediates; everywhere had a continuous spectrum of ratios.  The sites with the widest petals were at the lowest altitude (ca 1200 ft in Gatlinburg).  We judged that at ca 2500 ft elevation, there were the last of the "simile" but there was still a continuum of ratios.   That is why we consider the populations in the national park to form a cline joining the two species.  We visited the type locality for simile in North Carolina, and my impression was that they were all simile there (by petal width).  However, it was full of people -- it's a local park --and we couldn't do too much with the plants.

I think the nuclear DNA amounts may not strictly follow the ratios of petal width to length, as I recall.  I haven't done all the data correlation yet.  We did not take samples for DNA for all the petals we measured, as that would have been impractical.  It would also have greatly exceeded our permit limits.  We don't consider the project completed yet by any means, and my ultimate goal is still to see DNA sequence data for all these plants.  We are all three retired, and this is 100% un-funded, so it may not get finished the way I'd like to see it.  I still do not have any lab lined up to do sequencing for these plants.

It is fortunate, too, that the Trillium seem to bloom before the bears come out of hibernation!  Two old guys with bad knees (Richard) and bad feet (me) gimping along the roadsides, looking at flowers!  At least Ben got to sit in his nice lab in the Netherlands for his part of it.  Richard and I even had a couple cars of park rangers worried that we were going to fall over at their feet on one occasion, on a back road at high elevation.  We were a little out of breath, but we managed to stay upright.

Jim

[Larry Neel]

Hi There - My name is Larry Neel and this is my first post. I have no idea if I've set things up correctly but here goes - I live at 3500' in the woods in Siskiyou County, Northern Ca USA and have been gardening at this location since 1985. I'm particularly fond of Anemone, Corydalis, Erythronium, Hepatica and Trillium.The last 3 years I've been chasing around CA and OR in spring and summer looking for various forms of these species. For this post I'm attaching pics of 7 forms of wild T. kurabayshii taken in the last few weeks in Humboult Conty, CA. Enjoy.

[Brian Ellis]

Welcome to the forum Larry, some lovely Trilliums there, fortunate to be able to find them in the wild.  Enjoy the forum, keep the pictures coming .