Erythronium tuolumnense

Jane McGary via pbs pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Sat, 27 Mar 2021 12:21:39 PDT
Thanks to Robin for pointing out that a long off-topic thread on this 
forum can annoy people to the extent that they write to one of us asking 
to unsubscribe (the instructions for that are at the bottom of every 
post, by the way).

Erythronium tuolumnense is one of the spring flowers Robin mentions. 
Mine isn't quite as far along as hers -- my location is a little colder. 
E. tuolumnense is preferred by hybridizers because it produces numerous 
offsets. The flowers are small, though bright, and the luxuriant foliage 
lacks the variation (spotting and mottling) that makes some other 
species more attractive without flowers. The name comes from the 
Tuolumne River in the Sierra Nevada of California. Having spent most of 
my childhood summers in Tuolumne Meadows, a high-elevation valley 
through which the river runs, I can let you know how to pronounce it. I 
have to use E for the sound represented by schwa, or "uh" in English. In 
European vowel values it's tu-a-lE-mi, or for English monoglots 
too-ah-luh-me, with the stress on the second syllable. The -lumne part 
is a Native American word that appears in several river names in 
California; sorry I haven't researched which language, so I don't know 
what kind of representation the original transcriber attempted. I've 
never heard the "o" or the "n" in the river name pronounced by an 
English speaker. As for the species epithet, an Anglo-American would 
naturally stress "men," with secondary stress on "tu."

Also in flower here now: Erythronium multiscapideum (yes, that's the 
official spelling, thanks to a subliterate describer) and Erythronium 
hendersonii. The former produces a gratifying number of offsets, and the 
latter almost none. Trillium rivale has just opened; the only other 
western trillium in flower here so far is T. angustipetalum. Of the 
eastern species, only T. luteum flourishes for me.

Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA

On 3/27/2021 10:16 AM, R Hansen via pbs wrote:
> Ok, folks, let's move on. This topic has been rehashed a number of times. If you don't quote the source of your facts, you are entitled to opinions but let's keep them fact-based. There is too much going on in our gardens as it is.
>
> ....I have Erythronium tuolumnense flowering, always before its hybrid 'Pagoda', plus E. oreganum and E. revolutum. E. tuo as I call it has the loveliest deep yellow flowers, several to a stem. Then there are the super cute little Trillium rivales (some of them pink, even), T. cuneatum which I have not yet killed, soon to have T. luteum, ovatum and kurabayashii plus other tinies that will soon go in the rock garden.
>
>
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