Posts tagged as:

colchicum

A Tale of Two Flowers: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day February 2009

February 16, 2009

Last week, before prices started to rise on flowering plants for Valentine’s Day, I picked up a pot of florist’s cyclamen to brighten up the kitchen–and to make sure I had a bloom for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. (Here’s the owl’s summer home.) There are hardy cyclamen that can live outdoors in the northern reaches [...]

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Garden Bloggers Bloom Day November 2008

November 24, 2008

The first half of November, when these photos were taken (November 12th, to be exact), was unusually mild. So even though I missed Garden Bloggers Bloom Day by a mile (well, okay, only 9 days), I’m going to post these photos anyway, so I can remember this mild November when next winter comes around.

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Winter sowing, aka cold stratification

February 5, 2008

Winter sowing, as far as I can tell, is identical to what, in my self-education as a gardener, I learned as cold stratification. The more traditional description of the procedure is to put the seeds in the fridge for the requisite period of time, and then sow them in pots or flats or whatever your [...]

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Colchicums are beginning to emerge

September 5, 2007

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Kathy’s Autumn Picture Show

October 21, 2006

Sunday, October 8th, was a gorgeous autumn day, sunny and warm. I decided to go up the hill for a walk in the woods, camera in hand, and you get to share the results. (Be forewarned: this is an even longer than usual post.) But first, a little bit about where we’re going. Our family [...]

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Pretty in Pink?

October 11, 2006

This is a section of the Birthday Garden, which is a somewhat raised bed sandwiched between the driveway and the house. At the base of the stone wall, looking rather pale, are some Colchicum byzantinum. Above them is an unknown chrysanthemum, which Debi Lampman of Bedlam Gardens in King Ferry, NY gave to me this [...]

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Curiouser and curiouser

October 1, 2006

As befits a good garden buddy, I gave some colchicum bulbs to my friend Bub several years ago. As a matter of fact, every time I dig up and divide a new kind, I give her some, so by now she has at least three kinds. But she’s never bought any herself, so all that [...]

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Will the real colchicums please stand up?

September 26, 2006

When I was growing up, there was a game show on tv called “To Tell the Truth.” The various contestants tried to trick the game show panelists into thinking they were the true zoo veterinarian or whatever weird occupation was featured that day.
Sometimes I think my colchicums are trying the same trick on me. Oh, [...]

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My miracle flower

September 19, 2006

Colchicums as a whole are pretty miraculous, emerging from out of nowhere and blooming without leaves, but this particular variety (Colchicum agrippinum) takes the cake. I planted it in autumn of 2004. It didn’t bloom then, and it failed to send up leaves in 2005. Not surprisingly, it didn’t bloom in 2005, either. When [...]

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They’re coming! They’re coming!

September 1, 2006

No, it’s not the Invasion of the Subterranean Aliens. These are emerging colchicum flowers. Col-chi-what? An underused flowering bulb from the Lily family, which hold a fascination for me that I really can’t explain. I never would have discovered them, had they not been growing here when we moved in. Their botanical weirdness of blooming [...]

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Currently Fretting About . . .

May 4, 2006

Perhaps you’ve read it in the sidebar. In one of the random quotations I quote my friend Chan:
I am instinctively suspicious of any garden writer (or gardener) who is insufficiently fretful.
You don’t worry about your garden if you don’t care about it. And if you do care, you fret. At the beginning of the season, [...]

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Curiouser and Curiouser

October 24, 2005

As you may be aware, the Northeast has been getting rained on for most of October. The rainy, warmer-than-typical October coming after the unusually hot and dry summer has made for some unusual plant activity:

Many of the plants that went dormant or semi-dormant in the heat came back and produced another flush of bloom. Most [...]

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Colchicum Foliage

September 17, 2005

How could this happen? After explaining to Zoey in the comments of this post what colchicums were, I realized I had never shown what the foliage looks like. It’s not exactly breathtaking, so I don’t have many photos of it to share. I had to scan in this photo, which was taken in my very [...]

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