Hello Jane,
What a list of early blooming Fritillaria.... when I think I have been trying lots in my garden in southern Catalunya/ Spain , zone 9, 120 m above sea level, dry med. climate (450 mm rain) with a problematic dry and windy gap between rains in autumn and rains in Spring.
I am preparing a list of all the bulbs I experimented here, in alphabetical order. I have just passed letter F, anh had to confess I was very disappointed with them, but as you can imagine I would be ready to try again and again. I have got Fritillaria biflora from one BX, they grow well , in pot for the moment, and I also would like to try some more californian species, if possible to see if they stand better the climate we have here.
So, may I ask you, according to your long experience with Fritillarias, in this case, which one I could or should try here.
Fritillaria imperialis of course, but aso F. persica, F. raddeana, etc ..failed here, for example.
Fritillarias are not moutain plants , do they all need cold ( we had no frost this year, for example ) or constant humidity when growing?
By chance, I am at letter H in my list , I have gorgeous Hesperantha vaginata blooming these days and lots of other bulbous plants do well here in open air
Kind regards and thanks in advance
Guy L'Eplattenier
> Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 13:01:22 -0800
> To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
> From: janemcgary@earthlink.net
> Subject: [pbs] Early-flowering Fritillaria species and their hardiness
>
> A walk through the bulb house this morning was enlivened by the first
> opening flowers of a number of Fritillaria species. Most of them are
> on the "dry" side, plants from semi-arid Asian and eastern
> Mediterranean regions. They include the following:
> Fritillaria raddeana
> Fritillaria zagrica
> Fritillaria eduardii
> Fritillaria bucharica
> Fritillaria obliqua
> Fritillaria gibbosa
> Fritillaria stenanthera (three forms)
> Fritillaria striata
> Fritillaria chitralensis
> Fritillaria arriana
> Fritillaria euboica
> Fritillaria serpentinicola
> Fritillaria sewertzowii
> Fritillaria latifolia
> Fritillaria caucasica
>
> Well represented is the section named for the familiar Fritillaria
> imperialis (not in flower here yet): raddeana, eduardii, and
> chitralensis. The Rhinopetalum section also tends to be early, with
> gibbosa, arriana, stenanthera, and bucharica. F. euboica and F.
> serpentinicola are Greek species sometimes included in Fritillaria
> carica, which is just in bud here. The earliest American species as
> always is F. striata from the mountains of southern California. I
> grew all these plants from seed, beginning with F. raddeana in 1988
> (the original bulbs are still flowering, along with their seedlings).
>
> We have had two spells of severe frost lasting about a week each, one
> in early December and one in early February when some of these plants
> had emerging foliage; F. striata had leaves up during the December
> freeze, when the temperature dropped one night to 17 F here. F.
> obliqua, native to the area of Athens, was in bud during the February
> freeze down to 20 F, and showed no damage. This shows that the
> literature claiming some species to be particularly tender should
> probably be looked at critically. My plants went through temperatures
> down to 20 F (minus 6 C) regularly at my former home, where I had
> them in unheated cold frames. The present bulb house is unheated and
> covered only with a transparent roof; the sides are wire mesh. The
> bulbs are in raised beds of very well drained soil.
>
> Jane McGary
> Portland, Oregon, USA
>
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