PBS Forum

Iris stolonifera 'Zwanenburg Bronze' in a pot by Janet Friedenberg, bought yesterday at Oregon Potters Association sale.

I also prefer the desktop because of the full-size keyboard, but I often look up information on the laptop. I very rarely use my smart phone for anything but calls while traveling and casual photography (no family, no job, nobody to tell me how to do things on it). It's very difficult for me to input on it. It does seem, though, that computer software is increasingly aimed at the phone user rather than those of us who do our work with it. It is easier to look up an unfamiliar plant on a phone than to run into the house and use the computer, but as Arnold notes, the images are much better on a large monitor. I don't think that PBS should go too far toward making the forum phone-friendly. But have you seen the new phones that are almost as big as tablets? What goes around ....

As the Membership Coordinator for PBS, I've always encouraged the idea of members in a region to interact in person when possible, and this has happened several times. Early in PBS's history we had a breakout session at a NARGS annual meeting, and Nhu Nguyen organized a meeting in Berkeley. More recently a number of us enjoyed an excursion to see plants on California's central coast. I can easily pull out subsections of the membership database by state, country, or postal code, if anyone's interested in setting up an event. When someone in my local area joins PBS, I invite them to attend our NARGS chapter's regular (in non-pandemic times) meetings, since there's a lot of overlap with PBS there already.

As Kathleen Sayce wrote, I have never sterilized my seed-sowing mixture or my potting soil. Since my containers are always outdoors, not under lights, I assumed microorganisms would get into the pots anyway. Being in the USA, I use Canadian peat for the seed mix, along with ground pumice (fines included) and coarse, sharp sand, in a ratio of about 1:1:2. I detest perlite but I realize some growers have no practical alternative. I don't like using bark products for bulbs because it appears that the same organisms that break down the bark also tend to attack the tunics of dormant bulbs. However, now that I don't have an alder woodland to exploit for humus, I have to resort to sieving the least bark-based, most carefully tested compost I can buy. Leafmold is not available to purchase in the USA, as far as I know -- even among the many special mixtures marketed for cannabis growing. Composted garden debris can be had here from the city, but I don't trust it not to contain herbicide residues.

I second the opinion on Oxalis obtusa. It got loose in my old bulb frames, and apparently hitched a ride to the new bulb house by secreting its tiny bulblets inside the tunics of desirable bulbs. I've found them in such places when cleaning bulbs. Fortunately, it's only marginally hardy here in Portland, Oregon, so the few that get into the garden in discarded soil don't proliferate. Its tiny, glaucous foliage and large, soft pink flowers are much admired by people who don't know it's a thug. It sends out stolons that emerge up through the drain holes of plunged pots, too.

One more addition. I had to look up the taxonomic name of this one, but I have seen it and have had it destroy garden plants at my former home in the Cascade foothills. Aplodontia rufa is known as the mountain beaver or boomer. It lives in burrows near moist places (my old place had several springs), it comes out at night, and we are told it eats mostly sword fern shoots, but I can attest it also eats recently planted shrubs. I never knew it existed until I found half of one in the morning, on the driveway, where one of my Malamutes had apparently enjoyed a snack. There was a local contractor working that day, and he identified it for me. Later I found the burrows. It looked like a giant gopher. It isn't a beaver, or even related to them; it's the only species in the only genus in the family Aplodontiidae. That forest-margin place can't match Kathleen's fauna inventory (no European hares), but it was pretty challenging.

Nutria, an introduced mammal, damages crops in the Pacific Northwest, but so far I haven't heard of it invading home gardens.

Hyacinthoides hispanica is one of the most invasive introduced plants in western Oregon. Almost every garden in the Portland area that has existed for more than a few years has it, thanks to people sharing "bluebells." It had already infested my current lot long before I bought the place, and I've given up trying to eradicate it. I let it flower for a couple of weeks and then pull up the scapes and all the leaves. The bulbs, as Diane suspects, do draw down deeply, and they increase like mad. Even a "trenching spade" I bought to attack this plant has failed to reach all the bulbs. In addition, it spreads readily by seed if not controlled. In more addition, it can be transferred from place to place when soil or compost is moved. Never, ever plant this on purpose -- but that may not save you, either.

I recently read "Otherlands," by Thomas Halliday, an episodic look back through geological time at the life forms of different eras. Hope it's all right to quote this:
Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday
p. 67 (Kindle ed.)
 
"What is important in conserving an ecosystem is conserving the functions, the connections between organisms that form a complete, interacting whole. In reality, species do move, and the notion of a 'native' species is inevitably arbitrary, often tied into national identity. In Britain, 'native' plants and animals are those that have existed there only since before Columbus landed in the Caribbean. These plants and animals have legal protection over and above 'aliens', but there is oh easy distinction between native and non-native ranges for species, and non-native plants are not necessarily damaging to native diversity. Dwarf nettles, for instance, are not considered a 'native' British plant, but they are near universally present and have been recorded in Britain well into the Pleistocene. The milk thistle Lactuca serriola, which grows wild across Eurasia and North Africa and is the ancestor of cultivated lettuces, is considered a native plant in Germany but is explicitly an 'ancient introduction' I Poland and the Czech Republic, and has been described as 'invasive' I the Netherlands.
                "So it is that even in neutral biological terminology, that of dispersal and migration, carries with it an uncomfortable ring of political language. ... The human imposition of borders on the world inevitably changes our perception of what 'belongs' where, but to look into deep time is to see only an ever-changing list of inhabitants of one ecosystem or another. That is not to say that native species do not exist, only that the concept of native that we so easily tie to a sense of place also applies to time."

Gastil's photo isn't N. thomsonianum (see my new post under that topic), nor did I ever send seed of that, because I have only one flowering clone and it is self-sterile. I have donated small bulbs of the Notholirion in the past, however.

Sorry, I failed to get the photo on the previous post (my first). Trying again.

Attached is a photo of Notholirion thomsonianum flowering in my garden on April 22. This colony grows under a deciduous magnolia in fairly rich soil that is watered once a week in summer. However, this species has appeared (from the tiny bulblets it produces) in various parts of my garden, including a gravel area that is completely dry in summer, a rock garden, and a shrubbery. The bulblets get mixed in when I move soil with other plants. The stem in the foreground of the photo is fasciated, which happens occasionally in this species, resulting in a flattened scape and more flowers. This desirable plant is an unusual color, cold-hardy to at least 15 degrees F, and fragrant. The winter-growing foliage, however, would not appeal to the fastidious gardener, since it is lax and long.