[Hmmm. I tried sending a shorter reply to this yesterday, but the message apparently did not go through. I will try one more time. Huge apologies if you get two copies of this.] Jane wrote: >> I would welcome input from any of you who have grown these bulbs in California, especially the southern part Early in my bulb-growing activities, I bought a copy of the book "Bulbs" by Philips and Rix. It has lots of photos of Fritillaria species, and I tried to grow a number of them. Almost all my efforts failed. I tried a number of the common Eurasian species, such as F. meleagris. They didn't persist more than a year, probably because California is too dry for them in summer. Same thing with F. imperialis, which never even bloomed. I tried to find damp, relatively cool places for these bulbs, but the soil here is relatively heavy clay. There is a very fine line between soil that is too dry and soil that is so wet that it makes things rot. Probably I should have tried raised beds. I also tried very hard to grow a number of California native Fritillaria species, back when seeds were easily available from the Robinetts and Northwest Native Seed. The result was almost 100% failure. I could get some of them to sprout (others not), but they dwindled over a couple of years, and I rarely got any flowers. In particular, I tried various selections of F. glauca and F. recurva over and over, with variations in soil mix and stratification. Plus a number of other species, usually concentrating on the ones with the most unusual colors. In contrast, most California bulbs such as Calochortus, Allium, Bloomeria, and Brodiaea and friends were easy to grow and maintain. I did get F. pluriflora to grow and bloom for several years, in a pot filled with heavy clay soil. It was a pretty little thing. But eventually it faded out as well. The one other temporary success I had was with one of the Asian Rhinopetalum species, probably F. stenanthera. I obtained it as a bulb from the UK, and was able to get it to bloom in a pot for a couple of years. It seemed confused by my weather, though. It bloomed very early, with buds that opened at ground level. I suspect it wanted more cold in winter. Eventually it dwindled away, alas. It was a cute thing. I'm not sure what I did wrong. My guess is that my usual cultural practices (8-inch plastic pots, no water from dormancy until October) let the bulbs dry out too much. But again, this was okay for other California bulbs, so who knows. I will be interested to hear what other growers say, especially folks from even drier/hotter climates than me. Dr. Koopowitz, if you would care to give some info on your cultural practices, I'm all ears. Mike San Jose, CA (zone 9, min temp 20F) From msittner@mcn.org Thu Sep 15 12:39:18 2011 Received: from pop3.demon.co.uk by pilling.demon.co.uk with POP3 id <1R44V7-2uwGPo-05-GBC.pilling@pop3.demon.co.uk> for <pilling@pop3.demon.co.uk> ; Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:39:18 +0100 Return-Path: <msittner@mcn.org> Received: from punt3.mail.demon.net by mailstore for pbs@pilling.demon.co.uk id 1R44V7-2uwGPo-05-GBC; Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:28:41 +0000 Received: from [194.217.242.210] (lhlo=lon1-hub.mail.demon.net) by punt3.mail.demon.net with lmtp id 1R44V7-2uwGPo-05 for pbs@pilling.demon.co.uk; Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:28:41 +0000 Received: from [216.150.240.86] (helo=smtp2.mcn.org) by lon1-hub.mail.demon.net with esmtp id 1R44V7-0000x2-CH for pbs@pilling.demon.co.uk; Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:28:41 +0000 Received: from [24.52.180.160] (helo=MSIhomeHP.mcn.org) by smtp2.mcn.org with esmtpsa (tlsv1:///AES256-SHA:256/) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from <msittner@mcn.org>) id 1R44Tt-0006QL-4y; Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:27:25 -0700 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:27:24 -0700 To: Recipient list suppressed:; From: Mary Sue Ittner <msittner@mcn.org> Subject: pbs list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-CNFS-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=rZFpNS_a_yIA:10 a=kj9zAlcOel0A:10 a=aFBr63R90Zqda9GcMZcA:9 a=fkYFy-hj_SvxpIu7GUsA:7 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 Hi, I apologize to those of you who are subscribed to the pbs list, but are set not to get email, but I don't have time to figure out who you are. This message is to let you know that this afternoon the pbs list started delivering messages from April 2011 on. We're not sure what is happening and haven't figured out if any of these are new messages. It appears that many of them are messages sent earlier that never made it to the list members or to the archives. In addition we administrators are getting a huge volume of spam, sometimes directly and sometimes being held since it is from people not subscribed to the list. Some of it is from some of you who were subscribed, but using the wrong email address. We have opened a help ticket with ibiblio, but in the meantime I have put the whole list on emergency moderation. Messages keep appearing, but so far they are only up to July so even though I sent a message explaining this, it has not come through. We will need to decide whether it is worthwhile to approve messages now long out of date. In the meantime, please don't post to the list. We know there is a problem. Once we have sorted it out and they are caught up, I'll send an all clear message to the list and then you can post again. Thanks for your cooperation. Mary Sue