Cold Climate Gardening

Russell Stafford of Odyssey Bulbs describes this as “a superior selection whose rich violet flowers are among the deepest in hue of any colchicum’s. . . . It is of robust constitution.” Well, it does seem robust, but not any deeper in color than say, ‘Zephyr.’ It seems like color is such a moving target. Two different people can describe the same flower with two different colors. It makes it very difficult to feel confident that I have a correctly labelled plant. Stafford doesn’t mention a purple perianth tube, but this has one, did you notice?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Blog discoveries come in waves, it seems. Tender Dirt was mentioned in a recent Bookish Gardener post. They both have a thing about rabbits. Rabbits, voles, woodchucks, deer–we all have our favorite villain. And the ones that claim to love all animals, share and share alike, etc., well, you can be sure they have a politician they love to hate.

Popularity: 2% [?]

SoCal Gardening, “The Art of Gardening in Southern California,” is my latest garden blog discovery, thanks to Ilona. And I’m checking out BlogShares today per her suggestion.

Popularity: 2% [?]

One of the few irritations I’ve had using non-IE browsers is that Movable Type’s text editing buttons only showed up in IE. This is because those buttons depended on some code that only worked in IE. Well, if this test post works, I’ve just found a fix. Using code and following the explanations found on Movalog, I installed a whole slew of buttons, some of which I don’t even know what they’re for, such as “s” and “b-quote.” This fix works well in Firefox 1.0PR and okay in Opera 7.5. In Opera you have to click the button first, then type the text you want to modify, then click the “close tags” button. Coincidentally, this is how tags function …

Popularity: 2% [?]

Here is another one where I am not sure I have a correctly identified plant, mostly, I suppose, because it is surely not the biggest colchicum on the block. On the other hand, I think Bowles’ description fits: “In C. giganteum the segments open out more widely and remain expanded at an angle of forty-five degrees, almost flat on the upper surface but with a tendency to be twisted towards the apex, and they resemble a Lily or Hippeastrum rather than a Tulip.” It does look rather lily-ish, doesn’t it? Bowles goes on to give it this recommendation: “It is a very distinct and beautiful plant, a strong grower, …

Popularity: 6% [?]

I bought this from Odyssey Bulbs because I wanted to see how it compared with the C. speciosum I had gotten from another source several years earlier. Wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to take a whiff of the newcomer. But it looks pretty much like the other speciosum. I guess having a lilac tube is no longer considered typical. Photo taken September 23.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Here you can see that Nancy does indeed have the much-desired purple tube. As with almost all of the photos on this blog, if you click on the image it will take you to an enlarged version of that image.

Popularity: 5% [?]