Brodiaea and Triteleia pictures

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sat, 23 Jul 2005 07:58:16 PDT
Dear All,

We our late rains this year I have had great blooms in my garden from 
Brodiaea and Triteleia, both in the ground and in pots. There are a number 
of species I planted many years ago in a raised bed that I never replanted 
blooming this year that I thought had died. They are species like T. 
peduncularis that grow in wet places and the last few years that bed has 
been dry before they bloomed so I didn't realize they were still there. 
Some are still blooming now, especially some of the late blooming Brodiaeas 
like B. pallida, B. californica, and B. filifolia. Most of the Triteleias 
are done although there are still some Triteleia laxa in bloom as this is a 
species that is very variable in the wild, both in color, time of bloom, 
height, and size of flowers. One size does not fit all. Our local 
populations are late blooming.

I have added some more pictures to the wiki of bulbs we saw blooming in the 
wild in April so you can see my point about the extended time for bloom. 
Although we didn't expect to see many Brodiaeas in bloom in April since 
most of them bloom much later in the year, in Merced County where we saw 
Calochortus luteus added to the wiki earlier, we saw Brodiaea californica. 
This was a lower growing one with smaller flowers like the variety 
leptandra which isn't thought to be found in this area. Georgie Robinett 
told me that she and Jim often found on their trips bulbs in areas not 
reported to be there. I've added a couple of pictures of it including one 
with Triteleia hyacinthina so you can see the size. This was drying grass 
and other vegetation as this was a very open area.

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

And I have added some Triteleia pictures as well. I added another picture 
of the Triteleia hyacinthina in Merced county. We also saw Triteleia 
montana growing on a rocky ledge at a higher elevation area of Kern County 
near Lake Isabella. Finally I added a number of Triteleia laxa pictures to 
show the variation. In Bear Valley in Colusa County where we saw some 
wonderful displays of many flowers there were a lot of them intermixed in 
the grasses and wild flowers. In Kern County we saw some stands of very 
large flowers. The Robinett's referred to some that they grew as 'Sierra 
Giant' so there are obviously bigger flowers in some of the Sierra 
populations. We found these flowers very beautiful with a sheen and some 
pink tones. Near Mariposa on our way home we saw a field of Triteleia laxa 
in the grass. As we got out to take pictures we walked down the road and 
came across a rocky bank where it was growing with other wild flowers. 
These flowers were very light blue with a wider umbel, not at all like the 
smaller dark blue flowers on shorter pedicels blooming right now in 
Mendocino County.

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue


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