PBS Forum

Paeonia species are starting to flower here in northwestern Oregon, and as usual I was looking around the web for information and help verifying their identity, as mine are all seed-grown. I came upon this excellent site: https://www.peonysociety.eu/peony-species/ . People from all around the world post photos with brief text there. I was amazed to see an emerging cluster of Paeonia brownii (or P. californica) in a garden in Finland. I'm still trying to identify one that came up, probably from a forgotten seed that got moved to this garden in potting soil with another plant. I have Josef and Jarmila Halda's sumptuous book on the genus and will see what I can find there to match this plant with crimson flowers and sharply lobed, dark green leaves. Another spot to watch is a large colony of P. daurica seedlings, the offspring of P. daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii (I think that's the current concept of the yellow form), left to grow in hope of another real yellow, but so far mainly cream flushed pink. The yellow parent, from a Halda collection, is stronger in color than the wild plants I saw in the Caucasus. The common pink form of P. daurica grows nearby, and here and there around the garden, possibly planted by jays.

It shouldn't look like dead vegetation. I grew this Puya for years in a big pot in a solarium, and it finally flowered. However, I got rid of it because I was tired of getting stabbed by its hundreds of fishhook-like marginal spines. In Chile, P. alpestris provides shelter for a rare species of chinchilla, and is encouraged to grow in the preserve dedicated to this little nocturnal mammal. The Chinchilla Reserve is also an excellent place to see many plants in flower around December, and interesting birds too. Puya species seem to be fairly easy to propagate from seed.

The list of "unacceptable plants" from NARGS that David quoted originated with me. I've done every phase of the NARGS SX, including 3 years as intake manager in the mid-1990s. My capacity for snarking about common donations is limitless. For the past few years I've just done packaging, and it's hard to be asked to put together 30 packets of Lilium formosanum (for example); and then there are all the donors who send in Clematis seed.

The Calochortus appears to be C. monophyllus.

The correct spelling is "Knightshayes," not "Knightslayes." The Romulea I have grown as 'Knightshayes form' was deeper in color than the plants in the preceding photo.

Rebecca, I have a good quantity of this species, grown from wild-collected seed. You can contact me privately through the "Membership" button on the PBS website, since I'm the Membership Coordinator for the society. I could send you bulbs this summer.

Since there do not seem to be strict objections to this idea, I will post a few species I have grown and no longer have, which I would love to grow again. I would be delighted to show my current inventory to anyone able to exchange these, as bulbs within the USA or as seeds from elsewhere. Several are native to Europe, so perhaps they are more often cultivated there. For reassurance, I formerly grew all these to flowering from seed and lost them when I moved the collection about 12 years ago.
Acis longifolia
Colchicum kesselringii
Erythronium helenae
Fritillaria tubiformis
Iris stenophylla
Ranunculus abnormis

Some bulb offsets are very small and can be sent as seeds if protected from being smashed. For a long time I had only one clone of Notholirion thomsonianum, so no seed, but several years ago an acquaintance obtained the species' tiny offsets from someone in New Zealand and shared them with me. It's definitely another clone because my original was a seedling via the Scottish RGC. The new one is about a year from flowering size now. Meanwhile, last year viable seed startlingly showed up in the NARGS leftovers, donated by a grower in Oakland, and I obtained good germination from it. Illahe Nursery has some too, so I hope someday this spectacular monocarpic bulb will be common in temperate gardens in the USA. It makes hundreds of offsets.

To Carlos's question, would it apply to the EU? I think it should, and also to the UK. Those who already share seeds and bulbs to correspondents in other countries will be aware of the barriers to this, and how to deal with them. Individuals may have resources not available to commercial sellers and plant societies, such as bringing material personally through customs while traveling rather than risking shipped items being held up for months awaiting inspection.

I would like to offer a proposal for privately arranged exchanges via this forum. Individuals could post "want lists" in this topic for others to read. Those who have the desired species to spare could reply, offering their own want list of possible trade items, and the individuals could then email each other privately to arrange shipping. I suggest that the want list be limited to no more than ten species, with subsequent revised posts as wants are met. This would not be an official PBS activity, merely an exchange between individuals. Some of us rarely see anything on the BX that fits with our interests and growing facilities, but we may have extensive collections within which others may find long-sought species. Please reply to this post with your opinions on setting up this function on the Forum. Once we've discussed it, I'll be glad to post my own little want list and to peruse those of others for possible exchanges.

Rimmer, our favorite typing-challenged correspondent, has posted a Hyacinthella. Most species in this genus seem to be among the earliest "spring" bulbs in flower. First one here is H. glabrescens; two more showing color.

Slowly emerging from an ice storm in the Pacific Northwest. Mark at Illahe (60 miles south of me) reports no collapsed greenhouses, but that happened at other nurseries. I crept out to the bulb house (open sided, solid roof) yesterday and found most foliage looking healthy after 100+ hours below freezing. The horrible Oxalis obtusa that infests the raised beds and comes up through the pot drains, however, looks really dead; probably too much to hope that its zillions of bulblets have died, but at least spring won't look so awful without its foliage there. Snowdrops in the open garden standing up again. Still at least a day before the ice is off my steep road, though.

The map Bern shared is a good graphic for understanding the role of high mountain ranges and maritime wind effects on North America. Right now I'm in the blue-to-green zone at around 20 F in western Oregon, and would not be that cold were it not for the presence of the Columbia River Gorge, cutting the Cascade Range, through which continental winds bring deep, sudden cold. The Pacific coastline is about 120 miles west of us, with its mild winter temperatures in spite of the offshore cold Japan Current. The arctic air mass so prominent on the map is able to extend all the way to the Atlantic coast because there are no continuous high mountains east of the Rocky Mountain range. 

The color of the anthers is confusing. They are yellow at first, but then they open to dark bluish gray. It depends at what stage you see them. It does seem closer to C. trigynum than anything else. My plants received as seed under the name C. trigynum are much smaller than the candidissimum, but they also flower in midwinter.

Not helpful. I know what they look like, I just want to know if I should call them something else when distributing them. Some of Zubov's contributions on SRGC are names recognized in the Kew monograph, others are not. In fact, I probably saw this in flower in Azerbaijan when I was there in spring; will have to look back at my photos from the field. It is a snowmelt plant at higher elevation, but earlier here near sea level.