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There are band pot trays that have moderately fine mesh, so you set your bands in the tray, fill with soil and plant. Alternatively, if the tray mesh is too coarse, a square of screen covering the bottom of the try works great. If you want the bands individually, you'll need to figure out inserts...chopsticks or long forks can help.

Quote from: Wylie on March 10, 2025, 08:31:15 AM

Melasphaerula graminea is a small flowered bulb that has a lot of flowers on a single stem.

Still blooming in my greenhouse (volunteer in an Amorphophallus pot). It appears the musty scent is an evening thing, replacing the sweetness of the day.

Robert
about to get hammered with rain in San Francisco

Quote from: Xephre on March 07, 2025, 05:49:42 AMI rely on artificial lights and it indeed is far from ideal environment like under the full sun.
I was thinking I need to add more lights there as I'm planning to grow more of them.
I wish I had space for them out there...

The amount of light they want is impressive, the ones in the sunny front are vastly more vigorous than the ones in the back with only part sun...and presumably they would be even happier without all the SF overcast and fog. I'm lucky that most of my indoor plants are small forest floor and edge denizens, so I can avoid eye watering lights. There is a chance Pachypodium which at least is dwarf so it can be raised to almost touch the LED panel.

Robert
in San Francisco, where the inside plants can't handle the outside temperature and moisture...but remain irresistible.

The best I can say about some of our Ceanothus is that some of them don't resprout when you lop them at the ground...and they won't germinate without fire. But even if you clear a trail jeep wide, the tall canes just bend into the trail if you get any significant snow or even heavy rain with wind.

With solid fire follower stands, they ARE visually spectacular, turning hillsides pale blue or patchy white. Mostly a weak sweet scent, but pervasive, except for Greenstem (oliganthus?) which can be sickly sweet, especially in massed growth.

Dragging it on topic for a tidbit, after a fire, Calochortus albus will produce a firm set of leaves and flower strongly (the first season from bulb storage), after a couple years it is shaded out by the Ceanothus, reverts to making large lax fragile single leaves that are produced every year in the deep shade until the next time the canopy is opened or a fire comes through.

Robert
sunny, cool, windy, with daffodils and a sprinkling of other fascinating exotics.

Many of the Ceanothus are fire followers, including at least one of the parents of the purple-blue hybrids. They come up like grass following a fire, grow like crazy (1 - 3feet/30cm-1m per year), and are senescent within 10-15 years. Their response to pruning varies, but most of the fire followers respond like Hydra to pruning, proliferating branches in the area.
This all, of course, from the perspective of trail crew trying to keep Ceanothus from closing off trails in a single winter season.
There are some truly amazing species out there, Uli's C. leucodermis (and some allied species) with white stems contrasting with blue flowers, and a prostrate species from the northern part of the state (shades varying from white to light blue from plant to plant)...but they are notoriously picky about conditions. C. leucodermis, grows only in a 500ft/200m elevation band on the dry side of the third range of coastal ridges from the ocean, with different species above and below...elsewhere from me, it is similarly restricted where the conditions are similar.

Robert
in fogbound San Francisco

I'm guessing it is a fungal rust, I just haven't gotten around to spraying for that...only some species, and mostly where it is moister and shadier...the ones in the sun and wind out front have less.

Robert

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on February 07, 2025, 10:52:29 AMIt's strange that yours is sweetly scented.

This is what PlantZAfrica wrote about it:

The unpleasantly scented, sour and putrid odours emitted by the flowers, attract small March Flies (a nectar-feeding fly) which appear to be the only pollinators of these tiny, dull-coloured, short-tubed flowers. Ants are possibly responsible for the dispersal of the seeds.

Unless there is a exact lookalike plant, this is what it is. I just went back out and I do get a muskiness, but not unpleasant, and underlying the sweet and honey. I know I can smell nasty odors, since I grow Amorphophallus and Typhonium. It also doesn't appear to be self-fertile, although other plants, outside, last year, set copious seed.

In any case it is sufficiently attractive and tolerant of shade to get a garden opportunity...so long as it produces vast numbers of white shading to rich yellow tiny flowers, it can smell any way it wants!

I wonder how this BX bulb performs for others?

Robert

Quote from: CG100 on February 04, 2025, 12:13:59 AMStrange..................

I have always bought for scent, no matter the plant. I am as likely to pass along a row of roses, for instance, in a nursery smelling each, as looking at the blooms.
One great shame is that the now near ubiquitous Tete-a-Tete lost its scent when being bulked up for sale on a massive scale. Back when it was new and scarce, maybe 25 years ago, the flowers had a glorious scent, all that I have smelt over the past 10+ years have had none.

The yearly winner of the scent contest in my garden (despite the paperwhite's efforts) has been Melasphaerula graminea. A single escapee bulb (in a pot of Amorphophallus) put up a flower stalk in September, and has been blooming for 5 months now, scenting the well ventilated greenhouse with sweet honey.

Robert
in currently rainy San Francisco (5 weeks with no rain through January)

Quote from: Bern on December 29, 2024, 04:05:59 PM

Quote from: Robert_Parks on December 28, 2024, 10:06:06 PMWhat I have as camerooniana is very much a winter grower. My hantamensis also.

I'm conceding now that hantamensis is a winter grower.  But I've recently viewed in situ photos online of camerooniana blooming in January in southern Africa (early summer there).  So camerooniana may be "flexible" in its choice of growing season.

Flowers fairly late in the season here, with typical winter rains.

Robert

Quote from: Bern on December 28, 2024, 01:04:20 PMI am trying to put together a list of summer growing Romulea species to try to identify some that I'd like to try to grow.

I was looking at the PBS wiki and and Wikipedia and here's my list so far. Would readers take a look at it to see if you concur, or advise which ones to delete, or suggest others that I have missed? And if you are growing any summer Romulea species, would you please let me know which ones and what your experience is with them?

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Romulea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulea

R. autumnalis
R. comerooniana
R. congoensis
R. fibrosa
R. fischeri
R. hantamensis (possibly winter grower)
R. macowanii

Thanks for any help or suggestions you can provide.  I appreciate it.

What I have as camerooniana is very much a winter grower. My hantamensis also.

Good luck!

Quote from: Carlos on December 26, 2024, 06:10:19 AMI wonder 'how many plants' do you have...

G. equitans is really cool! I spent a little fortune on small portions of about 25 species from Seeds and all, they took three months to arrive and nothing sprouted, so I was quite deceived, specially by the seller. I am about to be equally deceived by Julian Slade in Australia. I mean, I am good at making seeds sprout. And I send good seeds, usually for free or against other seeds.

Seeds and small bulbs from SX are doing quite well, but more uncommon species are hard to come by.

I try not to look at the number of rows in the spreadsheet...and even that only indicates how many accessions I have. And with some, like some of the Gladiolus and Amorphophallus the number of individuals is liable to be vastly higher.

IIRC, G. equitans produced enough divisions that some went to the BX. Oddly small amount of leaf for the inflorescence and corm.

Robert

Quote from: Martin Bohnet on December 17, 2024, 11:22:15 AMAh, bomareas - actually edulis can deal with the German summers which also can be quite hot. As they seed around quite a bit i'm experimenting with some in open ground at a protected spot - and as I'm generating data on freezing depth now (of course the light frosts until now didn't even reach 5 cm into the ground) I may find the right spot and depth for them. I always find it interesting that Anton Hofreiter, a well known German Green Party politician actually did his PhD on Bomareas. I'd love to talk to him about them, maybe he had some ideas what species could deal with our conditions. Too bad his day job circles around weapons for the Ukraine these days...

but of course no Bomarea pictures in December...

Of my Bomareas, only edulis is strongly deciduous. There are a number of others that don't grow during the winter and get ratty looking, but they stay green. There are some higher elevation dryland species that should be strongly deciduous, but might not like warm humid summers. I don't know if there are any mediterranean Bomareas, but several Alstromerias will grow on a mediterranean climate schedule, so maybe some unobtainable Chilean species?

Robert
in sunny cool damp San Francisco with some winter Tropaeolums and a Cyphia shooting up

Quote from: CG100 on December 16, 2024, 11:40:13 PMIf you check the wiki, not all plants have coiled leaves, even in habitat, so genetics is involved.

Well, I'd guess that all the clones available in the trade have coiled leaves, at least from a genetic perspective.

Robert
in cool dreary SF, with dormant summer bulbs everywhere

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on December 16, 2024, 07:56:04 AMThank you, Robin.

I wonder if the leaves would be curly if I grew it here in Canada.

In a partly shaded situation in foggy San Francisco, the leaves were still coiled if not so tightly, so I'd guess yes.

Robert 
in rainy SF
M. pritzeliana went down late, and hasn't emerged yet, which means either it hasn't come up yet, or dormancy didn't get satisfied.

Quote from: Uli on December 15, 2024, 10:42:48 AM

Quote from: Robert_Parks on December 14, 2024, 10:08:21 AMMy evergreen Bomareas don't have an off season for blooming...4 of the 5 big ones are going off right now.

Hello Robert,

Wonderful pictures of your Bomarea...... I wish I could grow them here but several attempts failed, they cannot cope with our hot summers....

So you probably can't grow the cloud forest Passifloras either then. They say that cool night temperatures are ALSO needed.

It is interesting that they seem to grow and flower about the same year-round here, not minding the winter rains and temps to near freezing, while the deciduous species go dormant in mid-fall.

Robert
in damp cool San Francisco, where a big Passiflora X Oaklandia is about to get moved or removed because it is overly vigorous, requiring bimonthly trimming to keep it from blocking the driveway from the arch trellis that is threatening to collapse under the weight.