Erythronium americanum BX 364

Roy Herold via pbs pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 07:57:39 PDT
Folks,

I've been meaning to post an update to the status of the huge population 
of Erythronium americanum that I found this spring.

Browse through my album of pictures on Flickr to see what they looked like:

https://flickr.com/photos/31950571@N06/…

These are growing alongside the Aberjona River in Woburn MA, near a 
rather dull industrial area (note the abandoned tractor trailer). There 
are tens of thousands of individual plants, although the number of 
distinct clones is probably small due to their stoloniferous nature.

I found one area that was threatened by a dirt bike track and thought it 
was worth saving a few plants. Towards the end of the album are some 
bulbs I dug in early May that show how deeply they grow, and the stolons 
forming on the non-blooming ones that were closer to the surface.

The bulbs for the BX were dug after the foliage had gone dormant. I was 
amazed to find a dense tangle of spaghetti-like stolons, each of which 
had a little bulb forming at the tip. I threw them in a plastic bag and 
brought them home, where they sat for a few weeks. When I unwrapped 
them, the spaghetti strands had dried up and the little bulbs had 
tripled in size. Most curious.

Enjoy,

--Roy
NW of Boston
90F today




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