What Is Your Oldest Plant?

Matt Mattus mmattus@charter.net
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:59:37 PDT
I too had gardening parents, I would say a pivotal moment was my father
taking me on his shoulders out to feed the chickens in the early 60's. We
would go out back the the far coops. He would always stop at a rain barrel
about halfway there, and one time, he pointed out a large clump of Trillium
erectum in bloom just behind the faucet.

Today, the clump is still there, but barely, as the tractors that built my
greenhouse foundation crushed the colony ten years ago, I thought that I
lost it, but it is slowly returning as seedlings mature.

I imagine that he and his 9 brothers transplanted it from the woods out back
where they still grow wild, most likely collected in the 1920's. Now 50
years later, I live here again, (and dad turns 99 in February, still lives
here too). He still takes his walker out back every day to feed the
chickens, and he still passes by what remains of the trillium erectum.  I
imagine that seedling mature as the older plant dies, but I am not sure.
There seems to be a good ten years of seedlings growing at different
heights. Clearly, it likes the soil here.

That said, there are many plants and trees here around 100 years old that my
grandfather must have planted ( never knew him), but the peonies are even
older, and my father told me that they were dug from a nearby celery farm in
the 1920's - he and his brothers 'borrowed' them, to give to their mother as
a birthday gift (along with a live goose).

Matt Mattus
Central Massachusetts.
USDA zone 5b






On 10/1/12 5:29 PM, "David Pilling" <pbs@pilling.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> In message <506A0321.6080408@gmail.com>, Judy Glattstein <jgglatt@gmail.com>
> writes
>> oldest bulb / corm /tuber and what's their earliest bulb-related memory?
> 
> Oddly enough I remember large red tulips, I'd be about 5 and we'd not had a
> garden until
> then. At 'infant' school [1] the game was to grow bulbs out of soil -
> hyacinths I think.
> 
> Longest survivor (bulbs) is the Iris sibirica hybrid pictured here on the PBS
> wiki:
> 
> http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
> ica
> 
> 
> [1] age 5-7.





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