Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Some Pelargoniums in the Fall

Pelargonium multibracteatum Dalil Yemen form



Pelargonium candicans

Pelargonium candicans

Pelargonium aridum x quinquelobatum tetraploid

Pelargonium aridum x quinquelobatum tetraploid

Pelargonium aridum x quinquelobatum tetraploid with Petunia exerta

Pelargonium aridum x quinquelobatum tetraploid leaf
Pelargoniums are of course my favorite genus, and I am now growing several out in my gardens.  Pelargonium multibracteatum is a species from northeast Africa and the Arabian peninsula.  It is variable and the form shown resembles P, quinquelobatum which inhabits a similar range and is also a variable species.  However P quinquelobatum flowers range from blue grey to greenish and yellowish, whereas multibracteatum is white to pink.  This one was collected in Dalil  Yemen some years ago and has made the rounds among pelargonium collectors.  I like it because it is easy to grow, flowers profusely and the leaves are nicely zoned.  It is easy to lift and grow indoors under lights as well.   It does not survive our winter cold but I wouldnt be surprised if it can self sow, certainly P. quinquelobatum has done that before in gardens of mine.
Pelargonium candicans comes from the Cape of South Africa and although it is primarily found in winter rainfall regions it adapts nicely to our climate and does self sow. It isn't very showy,although the silvery leaves are nice in a quiet sort of way.  
When I was doing my thesis research at Cornell I created a number of interspecific pelargonium hybrids via a modified embryo rescue procedure.  During this process it was not unusual for diploid species crosses to sometimes yield both diploid and tetraploid hybrid progeny.  The diploid hybrids are most often sterile but the tetraploids are often fully fertile and such was the case with the cross I made of aridum x quinquelobatum.  Its pink flowers are short lived, self pollinating in the same manner as P aridum does, to yield plenty of viable seeds.  The leaves are fairly attractive, larger than aridum but divided much as as aridum is, but also getting a dark zonal marking from the quinquelobatum parent.  Again it is not cold hardy but it is vigorous, easily lifted for winter if desired and in any case there is plenty of seed produced by even a single plant.  I sometimes like to use it in my classes as an example of a "species" I created, after all it is fully fertile and cannot backcross to either parent (which come from geographically far apart areas of Africa anyway so a natural hybrid between them would never happen in nature).  All it would need is a "home'' but I'd rather keep it in my garden and share it with other pelargonium collectors rather than set it loose in the wild and confuse a bunch of botanists in the future.

Crazy for Commelinids

Commelina virginica


Commelina virginica

Commelina sp ex Karen Petersen

Tinantia pringlei Berkeley form

Aneilema aequinoctiale

Aneilema aequinoctiale

Aneilema aequinoctiale

Commelina africana

Commelina africana
Found a few more recent photos from this fall, and it seems indeed that I do like commenilids, to the point that I grow several species.   I found my plant of Commelina virginica in coastal South Carolina but it has a much wider range.  It is a rather short upright growing plant and although the flowers are not bad looking, they are fleeting even by commelinid standards.   It remains to be seen how hardy it will be in my garden, while I am certain hardy ecotypes exist this plant didn't come from a very cold area so it remains to be seen how permanent it will be.  In any case I did collect seed, which is a tedious process for most commelinids except a couple which I will mention later on.  Basically one has to collect the dried bracts from which the flowers emerge, these will contain the oblong seed pods within.  Then one rubs the pods until the single seed, or occasionally two, is released.
Another blue flowered species is one that Karen Petersen collected seeds of, I think it came from Kenya.  It is more showy than our native species, and readily self sows into other pots near it and can withstand considerable drought.   Like all of them it propagates easily from cuttings or seeds.
I just posted about Tinantia pringlei only to find a photo confirming what I suspected, that yes indeed I do have the Berkeley form also growing in the backyard in a different garden than the Plant Delights form.  And as can be seen the leaves have markedly fewer spots than the PD form.  To some extent spotting depends on amount of sun too, so both genotype and exposure are factors in just how many/dark the leaf spots will be.  Like most of its family that I grow, it requires no particular attention and just seems to pop up here and there and take care of itself.  Should it have too many offspring as many of its kin are prone to doing, they are easily removed so that populations can be managed in the garden without too much trouble.
Aneilema aequinoctale is a vigorous tender perennial from South Africa and points north which will self sow for me.  It creates a spreading ground cover from which short panicles of yellow flowers emerge.  It is easy to harvest seed of this one, no messy bracts to sort through, just look out for the ripe small pods and rub them apart to get the round seeds within.  It thrives in warm weather and appears to prefer some shade and decently moist soil.
Commelina africana comes in several forms and indeed I collected seed of several different ones years ago in Botswana and South Africa. One form has persisted over the years, being an excellent self sower and profuse bloomer.   It does best at the edge of a garden, where it can trail out into the patio or onto the top of a stone wall.  To harvest seeds, the easiest thing to do is to lift the plant's branches that extend over the stone and look for the elongated seeds lying right under the plant.  They are easy to pick up and any that escape attention (and many will) become next year's plants.  It is perennial in nature but severe winter cold makes it a resowing annual here.  Its not by any means the most showy of plants, or even of its family, but I enjoy it, making sure it doesn't stray far from the areas I allow it to grow in.

Tinantia pringlei and a Rant About Deer






This is an interesting relative of Tradescantia that I have grown for many years.  The form I grew at the old house came from UC Berkeley and had less densely spotted leaves than the form shown in the photos and possibly is a bit hardier.  It certainly overwintered just fine when we lived in Tuckahoe and I think I have  a plant or two around here somewhere in the back yard.  If not I can always resurrect some from my refrigerator seed bank.  The form shown is a different collection that I got from Plant Delights Nursery.  It hasn't survived as a plant during the last two brutal winters, but it does resow rather generously and grows quickly.  It is pictured in one of the raised beds in the backyard, and by the end of summer is in full flower.
Pardon the u-posts, they are there to support mesh which keeps the deer away.  I started by enclosing certain beds, now I have built a fence of mesh around the entire back yard but I haven't removed some of the earlier fencing yet in case a deer does get in.  We don't have many deer here but they are present and the damage they can do is astounding.  My students know that I hate them, that I regard them as little more than hooved disease carrying rats.  The damage they inflict on the local flora is only exceeded by what our species has done, and we have favored the deer greatly by removing the wolves that were their main predator and by creating "edge" habitats which they prefer. They now have reached such numbers that people are killed or injured each year running into them with their cars, countless more victims have suffered or died from Lyme Disease, erlichiosis, babiosis, anaplasmosis, and Powassan virus (one third of victims die from it, fortunately it is rare so far) which are transmitted by ticks that live on deer.  But some folks may protest, well don't rodents carry ticks too?  But comparing a rodent with ticks to a deer with ticks is like comparing the passenger capacity of a tricycle to a 747 Jumbo Jet.  Plus rodents are easier to control.  There are also devices which can render the rodents free of ticks that can be placed in your yard, but there is no such thing for the monstrous hooved version. Meanwhile our woodlands are being stripped of the trilliums, ladyslipper orchids, and other spring wildflowers that the deer hunger after.  I remember seeing vast swathes of trilliums in Ithaca, NY each spring when I was a student in the woodlands not far from the Cornell University campus, but I have heard that such displays are a thing of the past due to a greatly increased deer population.  I think I saw one deer in the evening at the edge of the campus at night once in my 10 years there as a student, but during my last summer visit for a long weekend about 4 years ago I saw one on West Campus at 11 in the morning!  Clearly something has to be done about them, but in the meantime the best defense a gardener has is to build a fence to exclude or at least make life difficult for them.  In the front yard which they do have access to, I regularly spray Liquid Fence and plant mostly toxic or smelly plants that deer don't like.  I will also chase and throw things at them if I see them, the neighbors must wonder about that one.  I want my yard to be as unwelcoming as possible and in fact I think I may have changed their usual route through the neighborhood.  As it stands right now, the cars are their major "predator" in this area, with coyotes a distant second.  I know folks who live right near large parks or other tracks of woodlands who have large herds roam through their properties but there aren't any really large woodlands very close by and so they don't have too many places to hide during the day around here.  So between the cars and increasing houses in the area I think that conditions are less favorable for them so that their numbers are unlikely to get larger in my immediate neighborhood.  And that is a good thing.
Back to the Tinantia.  I have one plant that sowed itself into a pot with a small laeliocattaleya hybrid orchid in it and it survives the winters indoors growing in the bark with the orchid.  Outside self sown seedlings appear when the weather gets warm and rapidly grow to blooming size.  I have to thin some of them out to allow room for other plants but it is not a difficult task.  It would make a superb container plant as well on account of the foliage, and the flowers are nothing to sneeze at when it is in full bloom.

Cleome foliosa from Kunene Namibia



This is a wonderful yellow cleome with large bright yellow flowers.  I got the seed from Karen Petersen years ago when she collected seeds in Africa back in the early 90's after I gave her some quick lessons on how to collect seeds from plants.  This was, of course, well before the advent of paperwork now required to bring in seeds from other countries.  Some of the seeds were harvested a bit too early, and not all were of indigenous plants, but there were some great finds among them.  This is probably one of the best, it was labelled as coming from Kunene, which is a region in Nambia.  I have identified it as Cleome foliosa based on internet research. I have grown a couple of generations from my refrigerated seed and although they got off to a late start this year (I think I sowed the seed in the container in July) they did flower in late August and September when the weather was quite warm.   It comes from arid habitats so it figures that it would do best at the end of summer when we had a prolonged warm and dry spell.  The flowers are quite showy and open for a long period.  In fact in order to get more seeds I had to bring the entire (very heavy) container inside when frost threatened and kept it near a four tubed t5 light fixture under which I grow a lot of high light requiring plants like pelargonium species.  The cleomes leaned into the light but eventually died off as it got cooler in the basement as fall went on.  Nonetheless I was successful in getting the thin long pods to mature enough to yield many seeds for another generation of plants.  The seeds are rather small for a cleome but they have the same round shape shared by other species in the genus. My educated guess is that the next growing season will start early and be warmer than usual, so if I am correct I can start them early and if weather conditions are favorable get a lot more flowers and seeds from them than I did this year.  Another African cleome, C. hirta, resows abundantly for me so I have no need to plant any more of them, hopefully I can persuade C.  foliosa to do the same after next year.  Until then I collect all the seeds they produce to ensure I have enough to grow more plants (and maintain a seed store) so that I can afford to let them shed some seed directly into the ground to see if they can become resowing annuals here in NY.  If they don't resow, it is little trouble to collect seed and store it so I can enjoy those big golden flowers again.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Acer pentaphyllum, a Rare and Unusual Maple


Generally I am not a great fan of maples, perhaps because when we were at the old house that my folks owned I had to fight with the roots of Norway maples in some of my gardens.  They were quick to grow, and steal water from herbaceous plants, and sometimes they would even grow up into pots that were set upon the ground for the summer.   I detest Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) anyway, it is an aggressive invader of our forests and is uglier than the native Sugar Maple (A. saccharum) which does have colorful fall foliage.  I also don't really want large trees around my gardens in general, the root competition is too much for most of the plants I want to grow and I'd rather grow a lot of small things in a given space than one big thing.
I did see a plant at Western Hills north of San Francisco years ago that I first thought was one of the South African sumacs but on closer inspection it turned out to be Acer pentaphyllum,  I tried a couple of small seedlings at the old house but they did not survive.  So this year I got a decent sized plant from Forest Farm and it has grown well.  It remains to be seen if it will survive the winter, as I think there is little experience growing it outside of the West Coast.  It is very rare in nature, confined to a small area in one valley in western China.  The leaves do look suspiciously like marijuana but of course the latter is not a woody plant.  It is deciduous from what I can find out, but so far it still has foliage on it but it stopped growing when fall arrived.   I think it will make a nice bush or small tree in our yard should it survive the winter.  If it does well I may let it take the place of the brittle cedars nearby.  I keep them only because they offer some shade for potted plants that sit on a wall and on the ground on landscape fabric at the base of the same wall in summer.   Otherwise the cedars are not in the best of shape, they have been cabled to keep more branches from breaking, which I assume must have been a problem before we got this house.  

Osteospermum "Avalanche" Offspring



In my last post I wrote about getting seeds off of Osteospermum "Avalanche".  Evidently it crossed with one of the purple tender ones as I got this blue eyed offspring.  Only one other seed grew and produced a plant, and it appears to be identical to "Avalanche".  Seed set on any of them has been very sparse this year, since we had too frequent rain in early summer followed by hot and dry weather later on.   Reluctant seed setters such as these tend to prefer optimal conditions, which would be cool and sunny for a few weeks at a time.  Nonetheless should my blue eyed plant prove to be as hardy as "Avalanche" it would be a nice addition to gardens.  It is a good bloomer and held up well to whatever weather it had to endure.
Only the most vigorous of the three plants of "Avalanche" made it through last year's brutal winter, but it has regrown nicely and is quite robust right now, as we have had a very mild fall with about two hard frosts thus far.  I took cuttings of the blue eyed plant to overwinter indoors in case the plant outside fails to get through winter, but with the strong El Nino in place it is likely the winter will be mild and thus its chances of survival are good.   I planted other osteospermums near it and "Avalanche" including "Purple Mountain" and one from Forest Farm called "Lavender Mist".  Alas neither plant has been very robust, but they are alive and will probably get through winter.  In fact "Lavender Mist" looks identical to "Avalanche", I can detect nothing lavender about it.  I think FF has some labeling issues, I also got a Shasta Daisy from them that was supposed to be a very full double variety, it came out single so I trashed it.   Otherwise I have generally had good luck with FF.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Osteospermums in the Garden, and Don't Always Believe What They Tell You

Osteospermum Avalanche

Osteospermum hybrid

Osteospermum hybrid

Osteospermum hybrid

Osteospermum hybrid


In the front, along a the walkway I put in a slightly raised area with lots of road sand and planted it full of delospermas and five different kinds of osteospermums, among a few other things.  Four of the osteospermums were from Home Depot, who knows what they are, but they all bloomed nicely all season long.  I also brought 3 plants of O. "Avalanche" from High Country Gardens, they grow differently, making a mat of foliage with white daisies rising on single stems above the foliage.  One of the three plants was more vigorous than the other two, but all bloomed off and on all season.  I never got quite the show they get in Denver with them but I was pleased and they are supposed to be winter hardy.  Before the recent snows came, they certainly seemed fine, while of course the Home Depot hybrids were long dead from frost. 
I made a point of finding and collecting good seed from all of them, and found plenty of what appears to be good seed on the Home Depot hybrids. Avalanche is supposed to be sterile, but with careful attention I found a few sound looking seeds on it too.  Not many, and now that I planted them most turned out to be empty shells but I am happy to report I have two nice seedlings coming along.  I don't know if they crossed with the HD hybrids or if they are selfed, though I suspect the latter.   It will be interesting to see how they compare to the parent plants later on this year. 
Osteospermums produce two kinds of seeds, flattened ones in the middle and triangular, much thicker, ones on the outer ring of the center of the flower.  In the case of Avalanche, the few good seeds were all triangular, in the Home Depot hybrids they tended to be triangular with possibly a few good flattened ones.  I haven't yet started the HD hybrids but it will be interesting to see how well they germinate and what new colors I might get. 
It is possible that Avalanche is mostly sterile not because it is an interspecific cross but because many Asteraceae are self incompatible and all stock of this variety is cutting raised.  Sometimes even with self incompatible Asteraceae one gets a good seed or two anyway. 
I'm looking forward to growing more of these South African daisies in my gardens this year, they flower all summer long till frost and seem to not attract critters of the four legged kinds. 
 


Friday, January 30, 2015

An Indoor South African Garden

Pelargonium incrassatum, pink form
Oxalis cf obtusa

Oxalis obtusa

Oxalis purpurea

Oxalis purpurea

Oxalis sp

Hesperantha hantamensis

Hesperantha hantamensis

Lapeirousia oreogena

Babiana sp.

Massonia cf pygmaea

Freesia fucata

Oxalis purpurea

Oxalis purpurea

Oxalis purpurea

Oxalis simplex

Oxalis cathara

Oxalis sp.

Oxalis fragrans

Lachenalia viridiflora

Oxalis nortieri

Romulea sp

Walleria gracilis

Oxalis gracilis
     At this point in January as we near the end of what started as a not too bad winter and are in a rather nasty cold and snowy phase that wont let up for at least another week, I, and no doubt many other gardeners, are really beginning to tire of winter.  So aside from seed starting, there are some things to look forward to each winter season, and that is the flowering of the many winter growing South African geophytes in my cool garage.  Under florescent lights and with the occasional help of some scarce winter sun, many species are grown in an environment that suits them well.   The best thing would be a cool greenhouse, but short of that, my setup works pretty well.  Adding some new t5 light setups has also made it even easier for some high light demanding items to be grown even better, though most of the plants are still under t12 setups.  My indoor light gardens may be costly in terms of our electric bill but it allows me to stay sane in the darkest depths of winter. 
     The stars of early winter are the Cape oxalis spp, there are so many of them.  Their nomenclature is a mess, since the last taxonomic treatment of this speciose genus (especially so in the Cape) was done a long time ago, well before DNA information became available for determining the true evolutionary relationships among the various species.  But nature, of course, does not care how perplexed we can become in trying to make order of her handiwork so the proliferation of oxalis in the winter rainfall regions of South Africa is both maddening and fascinating.   About the only thing they have in common are five petals, a complex fertilization system involving three tiers of stamens/pistils (sort of like the thrum and pin thing in primula, but worse), and bulbs. This latter feature is most unusual for dicots (or eudicots or wherever they are placed in the new classification system).  It enables them to pass the dry summers totally dormant, and makes it easy to deal with in my garage too.  When they finish growing and die back in mid to late spring, I just let the pots dry, clean off the dead foliage, and water again in September or October when temperatures drop and they show signs of stirring to life again.  It is important to repot them every other year or so, because most make copious new bulbs, and the small pots I have them in get crowded quite fast.  They generally grow fine in a mix of perlite and miracle grow container mix, but I am experimenting with pumice in place of perlite.  The only way to get pumice at a reasonable cost in the east is to order Dry Stall (meant for horse barns but can be used as a soil amendment according to the website) from Agway.  They have to order it in for you from their distributer and sometimes--like today--they get confused about the status of the company that makes dry stall--today they told me the company was going out of business, but a quick google search and phone call to the Dry Stall company proved otherwise, so I am on a mission to get it cleared up so I can get more pumice.  This is not the same as Stall Dry, that is another product, you want the stuff that is made of "volcanic aggregate" as per the Dry Stall website.   Its doesn't float like perlite, and is great for certain plants that don't like too much organic material in their mix, Worsleya being an excellent example.  But most of the Cape oxalis are flexible when it comes to mixes, so long as they are kept cool (runs around 50F in my garage during the coldest parts of winter) and get good light.  Most will survive and even bloom at higher temperatures, but not as well as at colder temps based on my experience growing them under lights in the old house at higher temps.  Certain species such as O. obtusa in particular do so much better at lower temperatures.  Some species can stand quite a bit of frost and I am testing some outside against the wall of the house, so far O. melanosticta has done the best, it flowers soon after it starts growing in fall so the flowers are not ruined by cold, then the leaves endure quite a bit of freezing.  It survived last winter, which was quite a bad one.  I am trying O. palmifrons outside too, this will be its first winter.  It is not particularly renowned for its flowers, but it has most attractive foliage.  It does survive outside at Plant Delights nursery in Raleigh NC.   It also is one of the species I did not have success with at the old house, it really wants it bright and cool.  Oxalis simplex (aka dregei) is an easy species that did well in both the old and new house.  It grows in seasonally wet areas in habitat so no worries about overwatering this species.  It proliferates quickly, even sending shoots out the drainage holes of its pot.  Incidentally, unlike most bulbous plants, stems of oxalis can root and form bulblets, many form bulbets along the underground portion of their stem anyway. It is one of three unifoliate species I grow, the others being nortieri with thick leaves and the thinner textured O. monophylla.  The foliar variation in Oxalis is as remarkably diverse as the surprising lack of diversity in the basic flower form, fortunately all Cape species have attractively colored flowers but many would be worth growing for foliage alone.
     For variation within a species, look no further than O. obtusa, O. purpurea, and O. flava.  All three species have a diverse array of flower colors and forms, and interesting crosses can be made among the different varieties, so long as they differ in placement of stamen and pistils--if they are arranged in the same way (there are three "levels", two for stamens and one for the five lobed pistil) then they will not cross.   There are some oxalis I have that have species names that probably should be lumped with O. obtusa, it is a very polymorphic species with flowers in just about every color but blue or purple, and often has two toned blooms.  It is easily the most diverse species of them all, and the different forms can hybridize to make a messy situation even more complex. The numerous small bulbs have characteristic raised ridges on them.   O. purpurea in its typical form, with a pink/purple flower, is a common lawn weed in the Cape, but it also has numerous other color forms.  O. flava in the broad sense always has succulent blue or grey green foliage with peculiar finger like blades that may be flattened or somewhat cylindrical in cross section.  Unlike the other two diverse species, it tends to have bulbs that are fairly large, smooth skinned, and they dive deeply in pots and presumably in the ground as well.   One could amass quite a collection of oxalis with just these three species, but there are many more, some of which trail, others make compact rosettes, and all are beautiful. O. fragrans lives up to its name, it smells like violets or pansies to me, a pleasant surprise since most oxalis don't have an appreciable fragrance.  Telos Rare Bulbs is the best source of Cape oxalis in the USA, the owner Diana Chapman has made so many of them available at very reasonable prices, and she even ran a half price sale on them this past year.  I brought in several species, mostly from South Africanbotanical gardens and some from wild collections (O. obtusa is everywhere in the western Cape) during my days as curator of the Desert Collections at NYBG.   The real pioneer, however, in first bringing the Cape species into cultivation in the US would be the late Mike Vassar, I acquired many species from him, and over the years as people have learned of these wonderful and easily grown plants, species have traded hands back and forth.  I reacquired some species I lost from Bill Baird, a podiatrist who is a self taught expert on the genus like no other person I have met.  He grows only oxalis, and not just Cape oxalis species, and has a profound knowledge of them and has networked with just about anyone who grows or studies oxalis.  He has also given me numerous other species both summer growing ones from the Americas and Cape species.  He gave me my first bulbs of O. cathara, a rare species with beautiful thin fingered foliage and copious fragrant white flowers. In the US, most of the Cape oxalis would grow well in parts of California, but the various rodents there assure that most of them could not become invasive species, except the pervasive O. pes-capre, which must be the only species they don't eat, and it is a problem in parts of California.  Gardeners in that state would do well to protect any oxalis they plant outdoors with wire cages around the bulbs to prevent rodent predation, much as we easterners need to do the same for crocus when squirrels and other rodents go after their corms. 
    Pelargonium is a much larger and more diverse genus than most folks realize, and most of them are either succulent stemmed or completely geophytic plants, dying down to tuberous roots during their dormant season.  The species are harder to locate than most other plants but if one understands their natural cycle, they are not hard to grow.  The winter growing dwarf species, mostly in section Horea, bear rosettes of leaves followed by flowers which range from interesting to very showy.  Most of them can bloom the first year from fall sown seeds.  The stunning Namaqualand Beauty, P. incrassatum is especially fast from seed.  Its one fault is that the dense flower heads tend to run into the light tubes so I sometimes have to force them down by anchoring them under another plant to keep them from growing into the lights if I want to see the flowers and set seeds.  It usually comes in screaming magenta, but I have gown pink and lavender forms sent to me many years ago by the late Charles Craib.  Charles was another self taught expert on South African flora and producer of some fine books on the flora that are now out of print.  He and Mike Vassar knew each other very well, and I had the pleasure of knowing both of them.   Pelargonium nephrophyllum is a rare tiny species that flowers before the tiny leaves grow out, unlike most of the others that flower with the leaves or most often as the foliage is dying down.  I am trying to increase my stock with some seeds from my own long lived plant.  While many tuberous rooted pelargoniums produce extra "tubers" that are like small potatoes, I have not noted this yet with my plant of P. nephrophyllum so I set some seed this year by placing it under a new t5 setup to give it really bright light so it could make more than one or two seeds.  I didn't end up with a lot, but I did get more than usual to try and increase my stock. 
     There is a whole world of small and not so small bulbs or corms to grow from the Cape.  Lapeirousia oreogena is a stunning tiny species with brilliant purple flowers accented with wonderful dark markings.  It, like all Cape bulbs, can be grown from seed sown in fall or winter when temperatures are cool.  Many of these species need to first pass through a warm summer before their seeds will sprout so sometimes fresh seed from South Africa might not sprout right away.  If already sown and nothing grows the first season, just dry the pot out for summer (as one would for the plants anyway) and resume watering in cooler fall weather, very often any recalcitrant seeds will then sprout.  L. montana is an even tinier species with fragrant lavender blue stars, I will take photos of it soon and feature it in a later blog.  Hesperantha is a genus that like Lapeirousia spans both winter and summer rainfall areas but is also more speciose in the winter rainfall areas of South Africa.  The tiny H. hantamensis is far from the showiest species, but it grows on Hantam mountain which is about the coldest spot in the Cape, so when I have increased my stock I shall try some outside.  It should easily be able to handle single digit drops (F) based on where it comes from.  Only by experimenting with it will we know if it can also handle prolonged freezing temperatures, since while it experiences considerable cold at night in habitat, during the day the temperatures usually (but not always) rise above freezing.  There are winter growing bulbs from the Mediterranean that survive fine here in New York, grape hyacinths and crocus come to mind so why wouldn't there be some South African winter growers that have that capability also?  After all only 10,000 years ago the last ice age ended and while South Africa was not glaciated its mountaintops were certainly even colder than now so the ability to survive even colder conditions than experienced today surely lurks in the genetic makeup of some of the higher altitude winter growing Cape geophytes.  I've had more than a few plants native to  Florida or Georgia survive NY winters without complaint so plants often have long genetic memories and often more tolerance for conditions they do not experience in habitat today than we know. 
     Romulea is the (mainly) South African equivalent of crocus, in fact there is little botanical difference between them.  The species depicted was grown from seed as an unidentified species, and without a more thorough knowledge of the different species I am not sure exactly which one it is.  Many Romulea species show considerable variation in flower color which makes identification even more difficult.  There are many different ones in both low altitude and high altitude regions of the Cape.   Some of the high altitude species have stunning red flowers, looking more like species tulips than crocus. 
     Babiana hybrids are sometimes sold in the trade and will grow in California or perhaps the lower south if the summer rains aren't too much for them.  Yet there is a plethora of wonderful species as well to choose from.  Some stay small, such as the one shown which I collected seed of in the south Cape/Klein Karoo area, others grow a bit larger.  Many have pleated leaves and the corms tend to dive deeply in their pots since they are preyed upon by various critters, including baboons.  Some are wonderfully fragrant as well. 
     Freesia is not quite as speciose as the above genera, but it also has the same basic distribution with most species being winter growers.  Many are fragrant to those who can smell them, apparently this ability is genetically controlled in humans.  Freesia fucata is an early bloomer, most of the other freesia species I grow are yet to bloom. 
     Massonia is a small genus which has its own Facebook group (really, and when one grows them one can see why they would inspire such a group).  The foliage is often the most fascinating thing about them, usually two leaves emerge from each bulb, very often they are flattened against the soil, and they may be smooth, hairy, green, or variously marked.   The paintbrush like flowers emerge from the middle and may be fragrant or may not smell so good.  Usually white, they can be pink or even reddish and close relatives in the genus Daubneya can be quite brilliantly colored.   The black round seeds are easy to harvest but so smooth they often escape when trying to separate them from the chaff on a piece of paper.
     Lachnalias also have smooth round seeds but there are many more species than in Massonia.   Only one species is said to be summer growing, the elusive L. pearsonii (not to be confused with a hybrid of the same name) from Namibia, but there are a few winter growers that maintain the winter growing habit even when they live in summer rainfall regions.  Lachanalia viridiflora is a stunning blue green flower, and is also very rare in habitat, being restricted to the Vredenburg area.  Luckily it grows well in cultivation.   It is self fertile so from one bulb I brought from Rust En Vrede nursery back in the early 80s numerous offsets and seeds were produced over the years such that NYBG has many from what I brought into their collections, and I have grown some from the abundant refrigerated stash of seed I have of this species.  It is among the first lachenalias to bloom, and will often flower its second year from seed.  Its hard to believe it is critically endangered in habitat, as it is so easy to grow and propagate.  I recently acquired a copy of The Genus Lachenalia by Graham Duncan of Kirstenbosch fame.  It was expensive but well worth its cost.  One can see how much effort Graham put into this meticulously researched and well illustrated book.  His personal experiences with the various species are informative in a way that too few horticultural/botanical books have, which makes this book even more appealing. I like when its obvious that an author has a passion and profound knowledge about their subject. 
     I've blogged about Walleria gracilis before, and by now I know more of its weird ways.  It is another species that is quite restricted in where it lives, and is one of a handful of species and in this case the only winter growing one.  I have found that it is self fertile, and also have seen it growing well at Wave Hill in the Bronx.  They also have many seedlings coming along.   Its not hard to grow but it is  a vine.  It forms a fairly large tuber and my plant did not awaken last year so eventually I dried it off and this fall it came up like nothing happened.  So if you grow this species at some point don't be alarmed if it takes a year off, it isn't dead its just sleeping.  It blooms for quite a while and the flowers resemble Solanaceae flowers and also probably are "buzz" pollinated by bees in their natural habitat.
     Besides Telos for bulbs, many more species of Cape flora can be obtained from Silverhill Seeds in South Africa (they ship all over the world), and some are also carried by Lifestyle Seeds.  There are also a couple of other reputable seed suppliers in South Africa, and some of the bulb and cormous species show up in seed exchanges such as NARGS and SRGC. 
     With the coming of spring more pelargoniums, oxalis, and "bulbs" will come into bloom while others set seed with my help in ensuring their pollination.  They provide a source of continual pleasure right through the season most gardeners in temperate climates dread, well until after the outdoor gardens have begun to spring into action. 
 


Pelargonium nephrophyllum

Oxalis kasvogdensis

Oxalis purpurea


Oxalis melanosticta in fall 2013

 

Oxalis melanosticta in December 2014
 

Oxalis spp

Oxalis spp

Oxalis flava

Oxalis spp