Allium regelii

[Guus]

Hello all,
Does anyone of you grow Allium regelii? If yes, could I arrange a few seeds from this species?
Greetings, Guus

[bulborum]

Guus

this is the most sought after Allium in the world

I have never seen seeds the last thirty years
keep dreaming

Roland

[PeterT]

Item 91-1261 http://www.bulbsociety.org/MEMBERSHIP/exchange/1992.html Roland,  I have seen it somewhere else too, cant rememer where though  about 5 years ago. wish I had got it then 

[bulborum]

Around that time I have seen it for the fist time in my life
Kew alpine department had three bulbs in a pot
one with a flower but not an etage
they told me that the plant never set seed

Roland

[Hoy]

Guus

this is the most sought after Allium in the world

I have never seen seeds the last thirty years
keep dreaming

Roland

Even a picture is hard to find. Why do anybody want an onion nobody has seen

[fermi de Sousa]

this is the most sought after Allium in the world

Even a picture is hard to find. Why do anybody want an onion nobody has seen

Trond,
I first saw this allium in "The Bulb Book" by Rix  & Phillips (later re-printed as "Bulbs") in 1982 and have wanted it ever since! I met Dilys Davies at a NARGS event in 1997 and asked her about it and even she had no idea on how to procure it.
cheers
fermi

[Hoy]

Fermi, I can understand that!
Seems you have no options but a trip to Kara Kum to collect seeds yourself

[Afloden]

This was the last and only place I ever saw sell it..... and I still wonder why I did not buy it when it was available.

http://www.wildbulbs.eu/cypripedium/homepage.htm

Aaron

[Janis Ruksans]

Four or five years ago frost killed around 50 bulbs of Allium regelii in my collection. Then I didn't found how to keep them during winter. Now I have 1 bulb which gave good crop of seeds this summer. Bulb last autumn was very small and I even didn't suspect that it could flower and in result even didn't note that it bloomed. I was very pleasantly surprised that at replanting I saw that this one bulb bloomed with 2-floor flowerheads (so confirmed that it is true to name) and gave quite normal seed crop. Following my usual practice all collected seeds were sown immediately after harvesting.
Bulb nicely raised in size and if it will alive following winter, it must bloom with several flowerheads. Fortunately Allium regelii is self-fertile. My first stock was raised up from seeds got from single bulb.

Today I harvested Allium helicophylum - very beautifully species from Iran. Unfortunately it is almost self-sterile. I have only one bulb and on large flowerhead found only 2 seeds. But now I hope to have 2-3 plants in few years and good seed crop for future. In same way after several years waiting I got one seed of Crocus autranii from my single corm, and after this seedling started to bloom - now I have good seed crop every year.
Janis

[TheOnionMan]

About 8-9 years ago I grew A. regelii from a bulb sent to me from Arnis Seisums.  It flowered just once, did not have a 2nd tier of bloom as presumably it was a young bulb, but it definitely keyed to the right species.  Then it disappeared. 

Don't forget folks, you can search the Taxonomic Allium Reference Collection database hosted at IPK Gatersleben.  The following link shows 6 acquisitions for A. regelii, you can click through each and then click on the thumbnail images for a larger look.  Because the image loading can be extremely slow, under the fair use provision, I made screen capture here to show this amazing allium, one of the few, or maybe the only species, that makes 2-3 tiers of bloom on a single stalk.
http://pgrc-35.ipk-gatersleben.de/pls/htmldb_pgrc/f?p=265:3:2448996496451976::NO::P3_SCIENTIFIC_NAME:1067

In one of the older, slightly off-color images (I'm sure a scan of an older photo), you can see both single-headed plants and stems with multiple tiers of bloom.
 
Janis, I do hope you get this thing going.  And you struck a nerve with Allium helicophyllum, another beauty that I have dreamt of for decades.