PBS Forum

Another picture of a native algarvian plant: Erophaca baetica. A lush herbaceous perennial with a large fleshy rootstock. It springs to life very quickly after the first rain and has started to flower now. It looks like a herbaceous Robinia and will grow to 150cm. It produces a lot of large inflated seed pods but a high percentage of the seed is parasitized. It completely dies down at the end of May.
The picture was taken on my land. I encourage young seedlings but have not succeeded to actively sow it in places I would like it to grow.

Dear All,

Some pictures from my midwinter garden.

Nerine undulata (Hybrid?) is the very last one of the Nerines. The flowers are weather resistant and last very long but have never set seed.

Narcissus bulbocodium another picture in full bloom. The flowers had to stand heavy rain.

Oxalis luteola

Oxalis glabra 

Oxalis namaquana has open flowers even in the rain.

Iris unguicularis 

Try Oxalis namaquana. Bright yellow even open in rain with me. But do not let it escape from the pot in your climate. I found it near Leliefontein. It formed a mat of shallow soil on rocks in a wet place 
Pictures come later...... it is raining too much.....
Uli 

Hello Jane,
That is a brilliant and sustainable idea. This way it would enable anybody to easily access interesting literature. 
Thank you very much for taking the effort and time to do this.

Uli 

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on December 17, 2022, 04:11:10 PMThanks, Uli.

I've just looked on the wiki, which shows some photos of lots of bulbs at the bottom of a leaf cutting.  Have you tried that?

Will any portion of a leaf work, or does one need to use the bottom of the leaf?  Maybe I could cut a leaf into several sections, so I could get bulbs forming on the bottom of each piece.

I've just found excellent instructions on Matt Mattus' blog.

https://growingwithplants.com/2006/04/propagating-lachenalia/

Hello again, 
Yes, I have propagated Lachenalia, Haemanthus and Veltheimia from leaf cuttings. For Lachenalia hybrids there is no choice because they would not come true from seed. But for species like viridiflora I strongly recommend raising offspring from seed and not from leaf cuttings. I find that Lachenalia are prone to degeneration, most likely due to virus infection. The shortest lived in Lachenalia mutabilis. Propagation by means of leaf cuttings or bulbils may maintain and spread the virus, seed grown plants are healthy and much more vigorous. Seedlings need one more season to get to flowering size than bulbs from leaf cuttings. To get seed you may need hand pollination. Large leaves can be cut into sections not smaller than 7 cm approximately. The lower part is less prone to rotting than sections from the upper part, they are softer.

Hello Diane,

If you have enough bulbs, I would recommend to try some outside. So far all my winters have been frost free but the temperatures often went down to near freezing. None of my Lachenalias has suffered the least. They are very compact and sturdy. The rain does not harm either. Depending on their native habitat they may well experience the typical morning frost in their home country. Can South African members comment on that?

Dear All,

Here are some pictures of my garden. We have abundant rain at this time so some flowers get ruined but most stand up to the rain. Lachenalia viridiflora looks particularly beautiful in rain. It is always the first one to flower, closely followed by Lachenalia quadricolor.
Zantedeschia aethiopica ,'White Giant' is worth growing for its foliage alone.
Aponogeton distachyus has woken up from a dry summer dormancy (in its pot in a dry spot in the greenhouse) within days.
The local Narcissus bulbocodium has different forms which flower sooner or later, this one is the early form.
Uli 

Dear Members living in the EU,


As an extra and exclusive service we are planning a joint seed order with Silverhill seed in Cape Town (silverhillseeds.co.za) at the beginning of the New Year. This is a service to fully paid members of the Pacific Bulb Society. It was Martin's idea and he agreed to do the logistics like he does for the Bulb and Seed exchange. The new  Silverhill website lists a lot of mouth watering seeds and they offer a phytosanitary certificate at an affordable price.

Please read the instructions carefully and completely.

Only fully paid members have access to this service

You must have a postal address in the EU, for legal reasons we cannot ship seed to addresses outside the EU.

Please compile a list of your seed order, INCLUDING THE PRICE OF EACH PACKET and add up the total cost of the seed you want, ALL IN US DOLLARS. You do NOT need to bother about the shipping cost at this stage, neither the cost for the phytosanitary certificate. And please, do not forget to include the delivery address.

Please send this list by email to Martin <garak@code-garak.de> or as a Private Message through the Forum. We will set a deadline to be announced. We plan to place the order with Silverhill in early January, Silverhill currently has a Christmas break for international orders.

Martin will collect the individual orders and will order the cumulated seed from Silverhill and pay for it. Silverhill will charge for postage to Europe and a phytosanitary certificate.

Once the seed has arrived, Martin will re-distribute the seed to the respective members. At this stage the price for the seed ordered, a share of the shipping cost from South Africa, a share of the cost of the phytosanitary certificate and the postage within the EU will be added up. You will receive a pay slip/invoice similar to the bulb exchanges together with the seed you ordered. In case of seed portions being out of stock they will not be billed.

This is a very streamlined and comfortable service for you, look at it as a Christmas gift. Please make sure that you do not cause unnecessary extra work for Martin by following these instructions. Martin will advance the money for the entire order, so please do not be late in refunding him once you have your seeds in hand, but please wait with your payment until you receive the invoice.

Please bear in mind that seed of South African origin will undergo a hemisphere swap. Which means, that seed for autumn sowing needs to be properly stored until OUR Northern Hemisphere Autumn. For spring sowing the seed should arrive on time.

The online seed shop of Silverhill is very big, so take your time over the holidays to browse, dream and.... order.

Please do not hesitate to contact Uli (johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de) in case of questions


Merry Christmas!

Uli and Martin

Hello,

Here is Brian's question, my reply below 

In the UK (SE in my Case) This species bulb grows very easily and 
increases each year with just a couple of summer months when it is not 
visible. If left in the ground it forms a congested clump of numerous 
small bulbs after a few years and more or less stops flowering. If 
lifted and split up every couple of years you can get each group 
flowering regularly on the larger of the bulbs. Any winter frosts make 
it look a bit sad but it soon recovers before flowering. Are there ideal 
conditions that give more reliable flowering each year? What happens in 
the wild; does it form congested non flowering clumps or do much poorer 
soils and higher temperatures stop it from multiplying so much? Are we 
just too kind to it or is it our long drawn out periods of indifferent 
weather to blame?

Brian, still no real frosts so far and very green again after a period 
of several weeks drought; weeds and moss replacing some of my lawn turf.

Hello Brian,

Scilla peruviana is a Portuguese native bulb and I have seen it in different places. The species is very variable and can be compact, almost dwarf and ground hugging or tall and upright and everything in between. Flower color can vary as well as the width of the individual leaf.
A common feature of the native habitat is that it always grows in fertile soil, mostly terra rossa which is on the slightly alkaline side. It can be found from full sun in exposed places to full shade. The soil is mostly moist to wet during the growing season but will dry out in summer, even bake bone hard in many places. The bulbs sit shallowly�, sometimes slightly exposed. In the wild there can be old clumps with many flowering bulbs but most of the time they are single flowering bulbs.

The reason your bulbs divide but do not flower may have to do with frost damage to the foliage in winter and a too wet and cool (for their taste) summer. This is a greedy bulb and for producing such a large and long lasting inflorescence it needs to be well fed and must be able to photosynthesize a lot. Which it cannot do with frost damage. I think a particularly warm and sheltered spot in full sun and lots of low nitrogen fertilizer should help. My purchased bulbs from Bulb d'Argence do divide slowly and do flower every year. After flowering they produce a massive bunch of foliage. Most do not get any summer water but some do which does not make a difference in my garden. They all go dormant once hot weather sets in.  They are not fussy about the soil pH, my garden soil is very fertile on the slightly acidic side. Scilla peruviana is even able to produce bulbils along the roots which I sometimes use for propagation with selected forms but in general I prefer seed.

Hope that helps,

Uli 

Hello,

Have you tried hand to  pollinate your flowers?
Your pictures show two plants, one flowering and one with spent flowers. Maybe you can still find some pollen on the spent flowers. (Not sure about that) I do not know if Worsleya sets seed with its own pollen. If not you can try the microwave method.
https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Microwave
Otherwise you can save pollen next year from one plant to the next if they do not flower simultaneously.

Bye for now 

Uli 

There are crosses between Haemanthus coccineus and albiflos. I was given a bulb but it is not yet of flowering size. The are pink flowered. So it is worthwhile trying to produce hybrids if you have red flowering species.
Uli 

Hello,

Apart from Wylie's questions I would like to share an observation I made the last days. At the moment I have several different Nerine in flower. Both Nerine sarniensis wild form and hybrids and Nerine bowdenii and X Amarine Belladiva varieties. What I noticed is that in most hybrids the stigma never becomes receptive. Only some plants open up the stigma into three small segments to which the pollen clings easily. Most others  maintain a pointed closed stigma to which the pollen does not seem to attach. Too early to judge if seed set has taken place in those flowers with receptive stigma. Belladivas never set seed and also none of them opens the stigma. Have you also observed this?

Bye for now 

Uli 

Hello Wylie,

A difficult question. Nerine seed can be apomictic which means that seed set happens without pollination and the offspring is identical to the seed bearing plant. But there must also be true non apomictic seed, otherwise it would not be possible to create hybrids which are definitely different from the seed bearing parent.
I have so far not found out how breeders make sure that they really have hybrid seed and not apomictic seed. 
The pictures you posted are slightly different in colour, is this because the camera software automatically adapts to different backgrounds? And thus produces different colours only technically?Maybe it compares better if you take a picture with both flowers side by side in front of a neutral background.
In case of doubt I would always consider them as two different entities. 
Hemerocallis does not produce apomictic seed as far as I know, so you cannot really compare with Nerine. 


Uli 

Hello Bob,

I really know this problem.....
Are your plants still green? Many Zephyranthes and Habranthus do not really go fully dormant in winter. In that case I would give them small amounts of water from time to time. Not too much to prevent rot, mildew and the like. If you grow Bromelia and orchids in the same greenhouse a position under the bench may be warmer than just frost free? If they go fully leafless I would keep them dry. It is indeed much better to leave the bulbs in the substrate in their pots, this prevents the roots from drying out completely even if the substrate is dry.
Hope that helps 

Uli 

Hello Carl,

Germination with these kind of seed is fast indeed. But not necessarily visible. Most of the time the first thing these seeds do is growing a root and a bulb, the leaf is the second step and comes later, in some species even a year later. (Not so late in Crinum) So be very  careful when lifting seed, you may damage a root.

Bye for now 

Uli