New on Wiki--more Moraeas and Aristea

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 03 Apr 2005 22:18:17 PDT
Dear All,

I finished adding more of Bob Werra's Moraea pictures to the wiki. I still 
have a number of native Fritillaria pictures, some Gladiolus, and some 
Romulea pictures of his to do.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

New pictures are of Moraea neopavonia (considered now to be M. tulbaghensis 
and quite striking), Moraea papilionacea, and a picture of Moraea 
tripetala. I can't believe how many weeks and blooms I got from the latter 
this year. I'm not sure whether it was our long dry warm spell, but 
something was to their liking. We had pictures on the wiki, but his picture 
give an idea of the plants, not just the flower and there were a lot 
blooming the same day. I also added a picture of my plants blooming one day 
recently just as it started to rain.

I have added a couple of pictures of my second winter rainfall Aristea to 
bloom from seed, Aristea spiralis. It didn't stay in bloom very long, but 
it was very pretty and a nice shade of blue and I was thrilled when I saw 
the spike forming. I've had dismal luck growing Aristea from seed, which 
still seems surprising since A. ecklonii can reseed about in the garden. I 
now have a few plants of a number of species so am keeping my fingers 
crossed. I heard from Martin Grantham after writing our group before about 
my lack of success with seeds. We both had better luck with our own seed 
started in the fall after we harvesting our seed so fresh seed may be a 
help. My other plant which bloomed last spring took a long time for the 
seed to ripen so I didn't store it very long before it was time to plant 
it. John Ingram once reported better luck with spring planting and I wonder 
if that would  have been because seed from the southern hemisphere could 
have been fresh.

Martin was using GA3 in combination with a pure smoke concentrate sold by 
Kings Park BG in Australia which helped a bit and keeping his plants 
covered with plastic until they germinated. He was growing quite a few 
species. Maybe if he sees this message he will tell us if he has gotten his 
to bloom. Some of my seed pots that had zero germination the first year 
(planted in fall) had a couple of seeds germinate the second winter or 
spring. They are very tiny so still in the risky stage. There was really no 
difference between the pots I used the smoke packets I got from Silverhill 
versus those I did not. My plants seemed much happier once they got 
transplanted in the ground so I plan to do that with the others if they 
ever get big enough.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue


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