Sternbergia autumn 2012

[pehe]

Some flowers from my green house. Not mass flowering, but the single flowers are beautiful too.

1,2,3 Sternbergia lutea X sicula Dodona Gold
4 Sternbergia sicula Bisceglie

Poul

[Tim Ingram]

Thanks Gerry - my experience is very limited with many bulbs, but sternbergias are so glorious in flower it does sound as though growing them in pots is the best option.

[pehe]

Sternbergia colchiciflora has started flowering.

Poul

[hadacekf]

Sternbergia lutea and St. sicula flowers in beds with leaves.
This year, these species bloom in the meadow almost with no leaves.

[pehe]

Franz, they are very lovely, especially when the leaves are as short as that. How has the summer/autumn weather been by you this year?

Poul

[pehe]

In my garden Sternbergia lutea and Sternbergia sicula 'Dodona Gold' are flowering now, but with much longer leaves.

Poul

[hadacekf]

Poul,
We had a dry, hot summer (36 ° C) and a dry autumn.
What has surprised me, were the short leaves in the meadow.
The conditions were the same for both locations.

[Angelo Porcelli]

Hello friends,

just a bit of time I don't pop in here 
As I see some of you are growing Sternbergia sicula (lutea) ex Bisceglie or Apulia, I would tell something about its origin.
This is a selection I made from populations around my town (Bisceglie) years ago, choosing the biggest plants in size of the flowers, especially with wide tepals overlapping. There are also some individual with more 'starry' flowers, yet very large and as a rule all these plants have large bulbs wich are less inclined to split, growing round and big as a narcisuss bulb.
From some selected plants I collected seeds and sent to Rare Plants in UK, which raised them from these seeds and named Bisceglie. Indeed I am not convinced it warrants a name, because it's not a vegetative propagation. I just think of them as a good strain with flowers bigger than average. Here a series of photos of my plants and a comparison with bulbs of normal plants.

[pehe]

Hello friends,

just a bit of time I don't pop in here 
As I see some of you are growing Sternbergia sicula (lutea) ex Bisceglie or Apulia, I would tell something about its origin.
This is a selection I made from populations around my town (Bisceglie) years ago, choosing the biggest plants in size of the flowers, especially with wide tepals overlapping. There are also some individual with more 'starry' flowers, yet very large and as a rule all these plants have large bulbs wich are less inclined to split, growing round and big as a narcisuss bulb.
From some selected plants I collected seeds and sent to Rare Plants in UK, which raised them from these seeds and named Bisceglie. Indeed I am not convinced it warrants a name, because it's not a vegetative propagation. I just think of them as a good strain with flowers bigger than average. Here a series of photos of my plants and a comparison with bulbs of normal plants.

Angelo, thank you for showing your Sternbergias and telling the story. It is nice to hear the history of my Sternbergia sicula Bisceglie! I bought mine from RarePlants last year, and they are flowering for the first time this year. The size of the bulbs are much smaller than the hughes ones you showed, I think mine need a few more years and a lot of feeding to get that size! I suppose that each of these hughes bulbs gives many flowers?

Poul

[pehe]

New flowers today.

Sternbergia sicula ex. Corfu top of Pantocrator
Sternbergia lutea (right) and lutea x sicula Dodona Gold (left). The last one is a hybrid of my own. It is flowering for the first time this year. It seems to be very floriferous, so I think it is worth trying it in the open garden.

Poul

[krisderaeymaeker]

New flowers today.
Sternbergia sicula ex. Corfu top of Pantocrator
Sternbergia lutea (right) and lutea x sicula Dodona Gold (left). The last one is a hybrid of my own. It is flowering for the first time this year. It seems to be very floriferous, so I think it is worth trying it in the open garden.
Poul

I like the one from Corfu Poul , very good form indeed !

Here the first lutea wil open his flowers this week .....(if the rain and storm of today leave the country again) It is the only Sternbergia that want to flower outside this year .... Under glas I see some first activity ........Everything is very slow this year .

[Pauli]

Sometimes I get seed om my Sternbergias the natural way

End of flowering season with leaves  very much advanced

[Maren]

Seen by Ian Butterfield's garage door, facing south, on good Chiltern gritty soil. Just beginning to go over but with more buds to come. It was raining and the flowers did not open up as much as when the sun shines.

[tonyg]

Reading this thread with great interest because we have never had Sternbergia sicula flower well outside on a raised bed until this year, and the summer has not been especially hot and dry. Maybe it is also to do with how long the plants have been established or how deep the bulbs have gone? We did have a very long warm and dry spring. I hope we might get this flowering more regularly from now on. (By the way it grows alongside Asphodelus acaulis which also tends to be very leafy when flowering, and maybe I should grow both in something like deep sand?).

They should do well for you Tim.  I note Gerry's comments about heat but they may only need a short burst of extreme heat to flower well.  Mine are sporadic flowerers but are in a very neglected and overgrown patch of garden - no sign of them this year 
However they have flowered well after similar cool wet summers, just as Cyclamen graecum has astonished me by flowering (several plants) outside for only the second time in 20 years this autumn.  We did have about a week of extreme heat at the end of July.  Was that enough to trigger flowering?

[David Nicholson]

........... and after four years of trying, without a single flower, I consigned mine to the compost bin at re-potting time.