Pictures of plants you are growing from Archibald seed

[ashley]

Very interesting to see Tim.  Thanks for sharing them.

[Hillview croconut]

Hi Tim,

Whilst browsing yesterday (I have some time on my hands) I came across a lovely piece you had written for the AGS bulletin maybe last year. I wish I could remember the details but I was absently minded "ground hog" watching an umpteenth showing of the movie, Ground Hog Day. But anyway I digress. Apart from the wonderful pictures and tender writing something you said leapt out at me. When we have built a garden or a collection, as in my case, you start to find the stories and the folk lore that connects them and binds them (and other people) fascinating and almost more important than the plants.
I loved Jim. He was a great soul. He iS a great soul. He gave me much and he taught me much. When you are in the "heat of battle" reflection isn't as powerful force but boy is it now. So many stories, so many cracking yarns, so much adventure, so much kindness. Afterall we all share the same children.
I also agree with you re EU thing. What a dry, hollow world. Misplaced nostalgia?

I don't think so. We need our stories, we need our own culture. We don't need just another shoping list.

Cheers, Marcus

[Hillview croconut]

PS This probably sounds crazy but when I have stood at a site where I knew Jim, or Brian M, or EK Balls had more or less stood before me, I got a frisson of pleasure running through my spine.
I nicked the only state library copy of Brian Mathew's, The Crocus, to use as as field guide on my first trip to Greece (ok I was a crocus nut). Should have annotated it! Put it back when I returned to my day job there. Not after losing it in the foothills around Omolos and then refound by an old man with a spy glass. He owned a restaurant there and he invited me in to celebrate, along with a whole bunch of tour bus drivers who had disgorged their human cargo at the start of the gorge. I thought, "Beauty!". He says, "its the specialty of the region". Lamb gruel with barley, followed by great slabs of fatty, boney, salted mutton stacked on a plate.  Nothing else, just tomato salad and copious amounts of ouzo, YUK! All I can say is thank god for the ouzo!

Cheers, Marcus

[Tim Ingram]

Great stories Marcus! I said it before somewhere but we do tend to put plants on a pedestal. They often deserve to be put there (after all they are extremely beautiful and interesting) but if you read the few articles Jim wrote in the AGS Bulletin you really get to see where they come from and how amazing these places are. And there is a lot of other writing like this in the specialist alpine and rock garden journals. There's nothing nostalgic about that; it is how you really learn about them. Not that many people write about plants in this way so it is very eye-opening when they do. And Jim collected and distributed seed - this is probably the most stimulating thing about the specialist plant societies too for many members! You learn more than anything about plants when you propagate them. I do tend to relate the plants I grow to the people they have come from and plant hunters and collectors, and places, partly because my scientific training leads to a proper acknowledgement of the origins of them and those who describe them but also because people can be as interesting as plants

[Leena]

Tim, do you know the name of the dark peony in your picture in the previous page? It is really beautiful!

[Tim Ingram]

Hi Leena - yes it's Paeonia parnassica. I think it is hardly grown but a wonderful and distinctive deep colour.

[Leena]

Thank you Tim. I thought it might be, but didn't know what kind of leaves P.parnassica has so wasn't sure. It is good to know that it is grown also in the gardens, so hopefully someday someone has extra seeds to share in the seed exchange.

[Maggi Young]

............ but if you read the few articles Jim wrote in the AGS Bulletin you really get to see where they come from and how amazing these places are.

It occurs to me that new readers of the forum may not be aware  of the extent of the Archibald Archive on the main SRGC Site - if that is the case then I commend it for further reading!

Amongst a great deal of fine information, copies of Jim's articles are all included there and  in the section on the "Writings of Jim Archibald"   you will find those four articles mentioned by Tim  which were printed in the AGS bulletins.

[Hillview croconut]

Jim was a great writer but the slog must have worn him down because he could have produced some of the best current literature on our shared interests but we only saw later glimpses of that talent. Too late now to speculate as to why he might not have tempted towards the end.
I always enjoyed his pithy intros to his paper catalogs and could almost sense the days they would drop into my letterbox. And when they did I would look forward to a private few hours transported to some sun-blasted peak or other, in some continent or other, traveling with him on his pen.

Cheers, Marcus

[Hillview croconut]

"Not that many people write about plants this way ....."

Hi Tim, then maybe you should read my blog

Cheers, Marcus

[Hillview croconut]

Hi Tim,

My lasf comment was intended tongue in cheek!

I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. Being there, whether in body or in mind,  stands for much. I tell you something else, it ain't Elysian fields out there. Some things are abundant, somethings not. Jim often used the word, "relic", now I know what he means. Some plants are sinking,  for all sorts of reasons, and we humans are definitely assisting the slide. I know there have been some appalling acts of vandalism committed in the name of "Plant Hunting". Why do you think some people dont publish site details anymore? But I tend to agree with Michael Wickenden when he says, biodiversity law should not be used as a pretext for institutions or countries to try and lock down and own everything on the planet. Fair use, I say, controlled but fair.

 I think if Jim were here he would wholeheartedly agree
Cheers,  Marcus

[Maggi Young]

Albuca JCA 15856  - which may be A. humilis - photo by David Nicholson

[johnw]

Muscari macrocarpum ARCH#690010

Sown 9 March 1996

johnw

[YT]

JJA 877.200 : Scilla puschkinioides *
Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Chatkal range, NW of Angren, Mazardjan. 1300m. In shade of shrubs.
(Distinctive & choice. Many ice-blue, dark-striped flowers. 10cm. Resents hot conditions.)

Sowing: Oct. 2011
Germinating: not recorded
First blooming: Jan. 2015

Pictures were taken today - 24 Jan. 2015

[YT]

JJA 702.305 : Narcissus minor
Spain, Leon, La Pola de Gordón. 1300m.
(A wild collection from NW Spain of this obscure dwarf, yellow trumpet-daffodil. While it is of debatable botanical delineation, it is always, in the opinion of John Blanchard, “a highly desirable garden plant” which does well outside in the UK. Usually a little more robust and later-flowering than N. asturiensis, though the early-flowering clone ‘Cedric Morris’ is thought to be a variant of this species.)

Sowing: Feb. 2008
Germinating: not recorded
First blooming: Feb. 2014
Pictures were taken 26 Jan. 2015

1 picture added by YT on 31 Jan. 2015