Spring Flowers outdoors and Hymenocallis in the Greenhouse

J.E. Shields jshields104@insightbb.com
Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:29:11 PDT
Hi all,

It's finally spring in Indiana. I wondered if it would ever come! The Iris 
reticulata bloomed a long time ago, and are now just tall leaves.  The 
large garden hybrid Narcissus are up and all in flower everywhere.

Outside on the rock garden, my Narcissus calcicola are in bloom. A couple 
of N. fernandezii and one lone N. assoanus are also blooming. Various 
Ornithogalum and Brodiaea are coming up too, but none is in bloom yet.

Trillium nivale is finished, but the first T. sessile and T. cuneatum are 
about to open. Claytonia are blooming, as are Dicentra cucullaria. 
Fritillaria pallidoflora are up and in bud, and even one Fritillaria 
thunbergii is up and after many years at long last is in bud!

My first Hymenocallis of the season is blooming in the greenhouse -- 
Hymenocallis liriosme (my #1261, sent to me by Thad Howard). The flowers 
are quite large, the cup being ca. 2.5 inches across and the tepals about 9 
inches tip to tip. I suspect it has some sort of fragrance, but I can't 
really tell for sure -- I have no sense of smell anymore.

I'm pollinating the flowers of this liriosme with some pollen of H. 
occidentalis that I dried and stored in the freezer last August. Besides 
sheer curiosity, I'd like to get a plant that bloomed later in the spring 
than liriosme but not so late in summer as occidentalis. Has anyone tried 
this cross? I'd like to know what to expect, and whether it is likely to 
take or not.

One H. liriosme that I planted 2 years ago in the ground outside the south 
end of my greenhouse is sending up leaves. I'm happy to see that it 
survived another winter outdoors in the ground here.

Seeds of H. eucharidifolia are germinating in the greenhouse, after having 
been planted last summer.

Outdoors in the Crinum bed by the new greenhouse, most of the ones 
transplanted there last summer seem to be sending up new growth.  They did 
not get much mulch last year, so they had to make it through this past 
winter -- a relatively mild one -- on their own.  It looks as if they 
did.  C. bulbispermum, C. [bulbispermum X lugardiae], and C. variabile were 
planted in this bed last summer, most being small seeding bulbs but a few 
being large blooming size plants.

What else is happening in the cold Northeast?

Best wishes,
Jim Shields


*************************************************
Jim Shields             USDA Zone 5             Shields Gardens, Ltd.
P.O. Box 92              WWW:    http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA
Tel. ++1-317-867-3344     or      toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA



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