PBS Forum

The instructions say:

General Discussion
Feel free to talk about anything and everything about geophytes in this board.

And "anything and everything" have been discussed.

Here are the topics, though I have left out the numbers of posts.

deer
gopher
mealy bugs & scale   
slugs & snails
spiders
stagonospora
virus

hand pollination
microwaving pollen   
storing pollen
 
Seed cleaning
trading seeds
SX seed results
paper pots for starting seeds 
seed starting times   
starting winter-growing seeds 
sowing old seed
flotation for seed germination   
transplanting seedlings   
time for seedlings to flower
   
chipping bulbs
bulbils
transplanting bulbs

summer growers
summer bulbs planted 
growth cycles
invasive bulbs

adapting imported bulbs

labels
stakes
sand (plunge) bed
soil mixes
fertilizer
gibberellic acid
mychorrizae

flower colors
short-lived flowers     

I have gone through the 12 pages of the General Discussion and counted how many posts and replies have been made about bulbs.

Guess which was the most written about genus.

Diane

Nerine bowdenii is the commonly-grown nerine here.  As I drive around the city, I notice patches of its bright pink flowers in many gardens.

Every year my daughter digs some up when they are in bloom and puts four in each pot to sell.

When she pots them, she removes any tiny new bulbs and plants them in a new section of her garden.  She was surprised that these plants are evergreen.  She is going to keep track to see how long it takes before they are leafless over the summer.

They offer an amazing range of seeds - from cactus to vegetables, including lots of orchids, and also bulbs.

https://urbangardenseed.com

There are some negative reviews online.

Have any of you bought from them and been satisfied with the results?

I just discovered a packet of Erythronium sibiricum seeds from the Scottish Rock Garden Club.  I am astounded that I didn't get them sown the minute they arrived, as this is a species I don't have and I was delighted they were being offered this year.

I decided to soak them a bit before sowing them.  After a few hours, it looks as though they have germinated already, but the white bits must be the elaiosomes which appeal to ants.  I wonder where they've been hiding.  They certainly weren't noticeable on the small dark brown seeds in the packet.

Well, I think I'll sow them with the eliasomes, unlike what happens in nature when the ants bite them off to feed their babies.

Most Erythronium seeds are very reluctant to sprout for me, except for E. revolutum which has produced hundreds of plants from my one original plant.  I sure hope sibiricum grows.

After several years of growing seeds of Gladiolus papilio 'Ruby' which never were, I have finally decided to identify what I actually grew.  These are in flower now.

And I did manage to buy a plant of Ruby from Far Reaches in Port Townsend Washington.

50 years ago I began my new 1/2 acre garden by planting bulbs in the fall.  I knew I'd be planting in the same areas in the spring and didn't want to spear my new bulbs.  I had seen lemon balm growing at my rented house and decided it would be a good idea to plant one above each cluster of bulbs.  

I had no idea how generously that plant self-sows.  Come early spring, it wasn't possible to tell where the bulbs were until they came up.  

I've been pulling out lemon balm ever since, though my son liked it to make smoothies so I never totally eliminated it.

This narcissus is in an old garden behind the coach house of a mansion built in 1906.

I have never seen a daffodil with a sharply kinked stem like this one.  Could it be a species?

I just received seeds of   Nerine augustifolia , filifolia , humilis, masoniorum.

They are very small compared to the seeds of Nerine bowdenii, sarniensis and undulata which I grow.

It is obvious that the seeds are viable, since almost every one started growing as they travelled.

So, two questions:  is it normal for those species to have only small seeds?   and might small seeds 
of bowdenii, sarniensis and undulata also be viable?

I recently bought a pot of this white one.  It appears to have two bulbs, each of which has put up two tall flower stems - one metre high!  (about 40 inches)    Much taller than the usual pink ones that are common here.

And I've never seen a pink one with wavy edges.

When I travelled south to California, I took photos of flowers and made detailed notes about where they were growing.  Then I would go again in two months to collect seeds.  It was often difficult to see them since surrounding plants had usually grown tall.

I wonder how long it takes for seeds to form in other places, like South Africa or Chile.  I don't plan to travel to collect any, but I'd like to know when to expect to be able to buy seeds.  It would be good to have this information on our wiki.

Just now I'm reading the new Saunders' gladiolus book.  Gladiolus flowering times vary widely.  Here are dates for a few:    mid-December to mid-January, February to April, between April and June, mornings only August to October, between  mid-October and early December.   etc.  

I guess I will have to check Silverhill every month.

Many South African bulb flowers last only a few hours.  Fortunately there are often new flowers coming on, so there are flowers to admire for several days at least.

Has anyone deliberately searched for ones that lasted longer?

My granddaughter noticed that a couple of pots of Nerine were different - bigger flowers and two broader leaves.

I assume they are xAmarine, a hybrid between Amaryllis belladonna and a Nerine.

Are they fertile?

This month's free e-magazine International Rock Gardener brings new descriptions of three Puschkinia species from the Iranian Alborz & Zagros mountains and no less than five new Crocus species from north-western & western Iran.

Authors are @JānisRukšāns, from Latvia, with @DimitriZubov, from Ukraine and Jānis with @AlirezaDolatyari from Iran. Further evidence, if such were needed, of the wealth of plant diversity in Iran. Download free here:

https://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2022Jun231656010077IRG150.pdf

Fifty years ago, a generous neighbour gave my little daughter a dozen Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica).  They proliferated so much that I have been digging them out every spring.  I compost the leaves, but the bulbs go in the garbage - buckets of them.  Despite years of effort, there are still thousands.  The bulbs have put themselves under the thick roots of camellias and fruit trees where they can't be reached.

This picture shows how they might get themselves out of reach of my fork.  The young bulbs sprout a thick white root.  Do these contract to draw the bulb down?  Does a new bulb form at the bottom?  Or do they move sideways into new territory?  If I weren't so busy digging, I might experiment, but after being photographed, these went into the garbage can.

With a forum, you can edit what you've posted, either immediately, or any time later.   If you do it immediately, there is no mention of the fact.  If you do it later, then your message will include the fact that you've edited it and when you did it.

However, an email posting gives no chance of correction.

Diane