Category — Bulbs

Dahlia atropurpurea in its more purple guise.

Dahlias have been on my mind lately. This fall, I had a noticeable gap in fall color. My young blueberry bushes had a spectacular range of leaf-colors, better than I’d hoped, ranging from dull matte wine-red to yellow and red with bits of flame in it.

But deer had pruned my “Emperor of China” chrysanthemums to the ground, and my late-blooming sweet peas were about the only other fall color I got. When my Old House Gardens catalogue arrived, I fell victim to the beautiful shapes and colors of their heirloom dahlias, and ordered six.

Naturally, when I got to my favorite historical library, where garden books from the eighteen hundreds are on the open shelves for all to peruse, I turned to books and sections on books about dahlias.

I love historical garden books. The first one I picked up, Joseph Breck’s** Flower Garden, published in 1851, starts each plant section with a quotation of poetry, if one is available. Attributions aren’t given; you get the feeling that these are poets you’re just supposed to know, the way we know quotes from Beatles songs and TV shows.

The poetic heading for Breck’s dahlia section is:

“In queenly elegance the Dahlia stands,
And waves her coronet.”

But the laudatory poetry ends at the first sentence of prose:

“The Dahlia is a native of Mexico, found on the table lands of that country, and I have sometimes wished it had been let alone there, ‘to waste its sweets on the desert air.’ It is so capricious in its flowering, so subject to the ravages of insects, so much influenced by too much heat, or too much dryess, or too much wet; and then, just as it begins to give promise of abundant bloom, having escaped all the casualties of the season, is cut down by the frost, and becomes a blackened, hideous object in the garden;, that, after many disappointed hopes, I have been sometimes disposed to say, I would not try it again.”

Which of us has not been jilted by a plant, and retained the mixed feeling of a teenager who can’t help being attracted to someone who used to be close, but now doesn’t even deign to notice our existence?

Will disappointment be the story of my dahlias? I have tried them before, one put up a few leaves; the others disappeared.

But at this point, I’m still hopeful: not inclined to take Breck’s dim view of things:

“True it is, that, after paying extravagant prices for new sorts, I have frequently been disappointed in not having a single bloom; and what is worse, the roots may not get strength enough to stand through the winter, even with the greatest care.”

In my own garden experience, I can’t really blame the dahlias for their poor showing. I ordered them on sale, late; planted them two months later, and proceeded to abandon them completely for months. This was due to my health, which didn’t run to taking care of all the plants I greedily acquired.

But I did successfully grow one dahlia last year: the august ancestor of many, Dahlia atropurpurea, whose picture you see above. I can’t agree with Breck’s dismissal of what I assume to be the same plant (nomenclature is a chancy thing when you’re reading historical garden books; Latin names were thrown around like confetti, and not infrequently the same plant had several of them, none of which may be the one that’s used now, or even in recent times).

“It was first introduced into England in the year 1789, was but little noticed, and soon lost. It was reintroduced in 1804, then a single purple flower of not much interest.”

I loved the mahogany-purple of this dahlia, which changes with the changing light, and obliged me with more flowers than I really deserved, for I threw it in a pot with some hard-clotted compost and left it to its own devices. Since I didn’t prune it back, it grew a single slender stalk of a few feet in part sun, and while it gave me only a couple of flowers at a time, they were magnificent, and more than I could have expected.

But, like sweethearts, the same plant may be a joy to one and a disappointment to another. I can’t help feeling that Breck is prejudiced. Cultivation was my main interest in this entry, because I wanted to repeat whatever it was I did that allowed the Dahlia atropurpurea to do as well as it did.

While Breck is more straightforward in the sections about growing dahlias, notes of chagrin keep creeping in. The dahlia cultivation section of The Flower Garden leads off like this:

“Too much has been said and written about the cultivation of the Dahlia.”

About the disposal of dahlias in the garden, Breck says:

“Dahlias look best in groups, as they hide each other’s ugliness…”

Even the propagation section sounds a soft note of scorn. Breck discusses storing the roots in a cellar over the winter:

“There is no danger from rats or mice or any other creature. I never knew an animal to touch them. You could not catch an old rat even to smell of them the second time.”

When I perused the cultivation section more thoroughly, I found a useful hint which I had not seen elsewhere – and perhaps the deep-buried root of Breck’s disappointment:

“While I resided in Lancaster [Massachusetts], my garden was situated on the banks of a branch of the Nashua River. In hot weather, a damp or mist rose from the river every night, and gave my Dahlia plants a good wetting. I did not have any difficulty then with the Dahlia; it flowered in great profusion, having had nearly one hundred blooms on a plant at one time.”

I am more fortunate than Joseph Breck; when hot weather comes, I have the technology to take his tip and mist my dahlias. Whether or not this will lead to a flourishing relationship, only time will tell.

Next post: Dahlia lovers (and more confused nomenclature)

* For those of you who are wondering, why the lengthy title, my title is a pale copy of the effulgently prolix titles of the 1800s. They cover entire pages, in a show of fonts and layout that I wish I could find online today. For a full view of the glory of Breck’s title page, check out this Google books link, where you will find a photocopy.

** Yes, this is the Breck of Breck’s catalogue. While he was clearly very interested in bulbs – he has much fuller writeups on them than some of his contemporaries – he also covered the full range of plants. In those days, U.S. horticulture was in its infancy, and there was less specialization. I’m not sure how the current Breck’s catalogue came to be bulb-centric.

Finally, I’m doing it. I’m going through all those old bulb pots I’ve had skulking around, putting up fewer and fewer flowers and leaves, giving me a guilty quiver whenever I looked at them: I was being a bad bulb mother.

My idea was to go through them all, save the dirt – which I paid good money for – and retrieve as many bulbs as were still there. I knew whatever was left would probably have shrunk small, doing their best to survive by shriveling on their lean rations and making offsets. But I figured: in nature, bulbs revive after long droughts and difficulties; maybe I can find a way to help them do that.

When I find loose-tuniced bulbs, I’ve learned to unwrap them for the surprise inside.

I have a lot of fellow feeling for these bulbs. I myself am slowly,slowly convalescing from a long illness which was supposed to get worse and worse, shrinking my life into a small shriveled thing until it took me out entirely. Instead, despite the advice of the experts, I’m resurrecting.

So, why not my bulbs?

Some of them are rare antiques, bought at prices I don’t even want to mention in public; those I replanted right away. Others – Apricot Beauty, Queen of the Night, Thalia – can be bought anywhere, and if you shop right, can be found very cheaply. But don’t they deserve a new life, too, if I can help them to it?

So I’m sorting through all my pots, looking for hidden treasure.

This one reveals three offsets.

Some of the old containers turn up completely empty, with only a few papery bits of bulb tunic and dried nets of roots to show anything was there. I can’t help seeing the parable, here. Some aspects of my old life have been completely obliterated by going through this illness, become part of the compost for whatever comes next.

Other bulbs surprise me by their tenacity, like the mysterious bulbs I found in a pot today.

At first, I thought, “Are these lilies?” They already had roots going – my plan to go through the pots while the bulbs were still completely dormant had to go the way of many of my plans lately. I just didn’t have the energy or ability to do it this summer, not even little by little, as I am now.

But I couldn’t imagine that lilies would last unwatered that long. It’s my custom to leave my spring bulbs unwatered in summer, as they are in their native lands. That’s actually why I started gardening with bulbs. I had so little water available to me that I scoured books and catalogues, seeking beauty that didn’t requre water.

Lilies do, though, year-round, and they never really go dormant. But these bulbs looked wrong for lilies. Their thick white roots were a little fatter than lily roots, and when I brushed off the dirt, I couldn’t see scales on the bulbs.

Finally the mystery was revealed: I found a label, deep into the pot.

(And by the way, how do labels do that? I mean, I know some bulbs can burrow themselves deeper into the soil to resist drought, but labels? Do the bulbs teach them how?)

The label read, “F. persica”. Fritillaria persica, that elusive bulb which has never once bloomed for me, had not only survived, but multiplied. I’ve never bought more than five, and there were seven or eight.

I’m still not sure the fritillaria will flower for me, but I repotted it into nursery pots, as I have several other bulbs that were showing roots. The nursery pots are special situations designed to encourage bulbs tottering on the edge of extinction into resurrection. I split the bulbs into their separate entities and buried them in richer soil with good doses of organic flower fertilizer blend, azomite and greensand. I’m also experimenting with using mycorhizzae. I have no idea if this will actually help; I’m just going by instinct, here. But since instinct is the way I got through a medically incurable illness, I figure it’s worth the experiment. Resurrection is a chancy thing.

The fritillaria label managed to burrow deep and survive, but other labels have learned the art of transmigration, dematerializing from one reality into another. I’m putting most of the retrieved bulbs into paper bags with the labels in and the names written on the bag – but the biggest assortment of bags are named something like “T. ?” or “N. ?” for the anonymous tiny tulips and narcissi which abound in my old pots. Even the treasured antique ones (which I know by their special pots) have labels like, “antique tulip #1” and on through 4 or 5.

Despite my labeling mania, my deep personal religious practice of using permanent aluminum labels which become engraved with the stroke of a ball point pen, many of the pots are complete mysteries to me now. At one time this would have irritated me immensely: all that labor lost.

But now, I just have to laugh. All that effort, all that obsessive and – I have to admit it – somewhat self-righteous labeling, all of that jaw-tightening effort to make sure everything was put into its proper category, remembered by its proper name, done right.

What was I trying to accomplish by that, I wonder? Why were those labels – which will probably last longer than my body – such a point of fervor? As Wallace Stevens put it, “Oh blessed rage for order, pale Ramon.” Well, I got pale on my rage for order, all right, pale enough that I’m putting aside both rage and the need to impose my conception of order on a deeper order that already exists.

Instead, I’m just enjoying myself. Resurrection can be fun.

Here’s the latest offering for my “T. ?” bags, to soak in kelp water and maybe do some juju on before I plant. (The labels? Not only do I have bulbs without labels, I have labels which have lost their bulbs. Since they have two sides, I’m saving these to be repurposed, also.)

Sorting through bulbs has an Easter-egg-hunt aspect to it. I’m never quite sure if I’ll find something or not, or what it will be if I do. I don’t have any way of predicting what will thrive and what will give up the ghost. It’s a good harbinger for my own future life, which may present me with unknown gifts, fragmented remains of something which once flourished in my garden, or something I can’t even imagine.

The pleasure is in not knowing.

And waiting for spring.

Honestly? I didn’t use to like orange. It was my least favorite of colors.

But I’ve reformed. And, like all converts, I’m anxious to spread the good word. If you’re still wondering which tulips to get,  allow me to offer a harvest time selection. Orange tulips can really grow on you, as you may be able to tell by my header photo (‘Apricot Beauty’ and ‘Annie Schilder’ are major players in that picture).

I was originally enticed into growing orange tulips because many of them have something extra: scent. And, gradually, I came to enjoy the orangeness for its own sake. I mean, how could you not like the full-moon tulip-bottom of Annie Schilder, above?  And how could you not like watching the daily movement of their earlier brick-orange turning into that luminescent glow?

It’s true that I started out with the soft stuff – pale peaches and apricots. ‘Apricot Beauty’ is so popular it would be a cliché – if it didn’t live up to its name so well. Like Annie Schilder, it starts out a deeper shade

and then its color lightens (I can’t say fades) to something so beautiful, so pale, so ethereal, that I used to think calling it orange was a crime.

The diminuitive ‘Apricot Jewel’, a batalinii tulip, was another of my first ventures in orange. I’ve written about these tulips elsewhere, mostly because they’re so beautiful I can’t shut up about them. I’d call them more of a peach than an apricot – they’re much yellower than Apricot Beauty – but I’d rather enjoy them than quibble over the color.

I ventured into the deeper colors of orange – and the deeper scents. To my nose, Apricot Beauty has a faint scent in its earlier stages (scent is a come-on for pollinators, so once the deed is done, it tends to fade). Apricot Jewel has none. I was greedy; I wanted huge shouting fragrance and tulips in once package. A little research showed me that the logical choice was Generaal de Wet.

Generaal de Wet did not disappoint; one day, I woke, and the first thing that impinged itself on my consciousness was not “I want a cup of coffee” but “where is that smell coming from?” It was a penetrating, musky smell that came right in the house and sat down for a visit, and it was coming from the group of Generaal de Wet I’d put right by my front door.

After that, I went on to Annie Schilder (which is more fragrant to my nose than Apricot Beauty; but  milder than Generaal de Wet), and I also tried ‘Prinses Irene’, another medium-fragrant tulip (I still haven’t grown any tulip that matches the strength of the Generaal).

 I wish I hadn’t grown Prinses Irene so early in my garden-photography career, because these photos give you only some idea of how the amazing colors develop. For a good picture of Prinses Irene, fully developed with its purple streaks, go here.

But these photos do give some idea of its Harlequin-like color development and blazing backlit orange.

Once I’d been bitten by the orange-tulip bug, I kept experimenting. There was T. whitallii, a species tulip only a few inches high.

 And ‘Daydream’, a tulip that starts out straw-yellow, gets a flush of orange,

and morphs into a wild pattern of almost-scarlet and yellow.

‘Orange Favorite’ is an heirloom parrot tulip whose complicated buds burst with variations of orange.

As they open, the purple and green and cream streaks start to show, and the flagrant fragrance (to my nose, the next runner-up to Generaal de Wet) unfolds, too.

Dark tulips are great complements for orange tulips, bringing out their colors beautifully in the vase and the garden. Van Engelen has a special combining Prinses Irene with ‘Purple Prince’, a combination I keep meaning to grow, but haven’t yet. (By the way, if you’re interested in knowing which are the best catalogues, in my opinion, you can take a look at the first of my five-part series on bulb catalogues. Oh yes, I take my bulb shopping very seriously indeed. And if you want the best in resplendent beauty, so should you.)

I tend to grow the black-purple tulips, ‘Queen of the Night’ and her look-alike consort, ‘Paul Scherer’. (For more on them, you can check ‘The Black Tulips”.)

But along with the deep richness of  dark tulips, I’ve also opened my heart to their brighter, glowing orange cousins.

Lilium regale, front view

I’ll admit it.

I’ve bought lilies in the bag, on impulse. Just going by their looks, in the shallowest sort of relationship. But I’m also an eternal seeker after something more, something…it’s elusive, but I know it when I see it.

I tend to look among heirloom and species bulbs for that elusive something. Older bulbs were bred for gardeners, not the cut-flower trade. What that means for us is that heirloom bulbs are easier to grow into flower and  tend to last better in the garden.

Lilium regale, back view

 Species lilies can be trickier, as most are very particular about where they live, but some are forgiving, and others can be patiently cultivated in woodland settings. The best places to find these bulbs are the gardens and catalogues of people who are as nuts about bulbs as I am. The breeders, the preservers, the people who see something in the wild and have the patience to cultivate it from seed.

You can find good species and heirloom lilies in bigger catalogues, such as the venerable Scheepers/ Van Engelen  listings (Scheepers sells small amounts for home gardeners; Van Engelen sells larger, discounted quantities for professionals, and people like me who just don’t know when to stop).  In lilies, breeding seems to make older varieties obsolete sooner than in bulbs such as daffodils and tulips, so you don’t see many hybrid lilies that are more than about 30 years old in the mainstream catalogues.  But Scheepers has several species varieties, including the incredibly wonderful Lilium regale and Lilium regale album, trumpets that will exhale scent on your midsummer garden and, if you’re lucky, establish themselves in a glorious perennial clump.

‘Mrs R.O. Backhouse’, heirloom lily supreme. “Backhouse” is pronounced like the wine god, Bachhus.

Brent and Becky’s Bulbs  offers an enormous selection of hybrid lilies, but also includes some old favorites, such as ‘Golden Splendor’ ,  a Jan de Graaf hybrid which has itself been used extensively in breeding due to its beauty and good character. (Or at least they did have ‘Golden Splendor’; I just looked at their newly-issued fall catalogue and can’t find it. Never mind, they have tons of other wonderful heirloom bulbs). Brent and Becky’s has the largest lily selection I’ve seen in a regular bulb catalogue, including an excellent species lily section, with over a dozen offerings. You can always count on their bulbs to be good quality, unmarred and bursting with life. I often think Brent and Becky are doing a darn good job keeping lilies alive in US gardens, even though they are supposed to be daffodil specialists.

For heirlooms, there’s always Old House Gardens, a repository of many fine heirloom and species varieties. Of course, as always in the botanical world, there’s considerable arguing over which is which. For instance, ‘Citronella’, a Jan de Graaf hybrid, is often listed as a species lily in other, less knowledgeable catalogues, with ‘Citronella’ acting as the name of the species selection. Citronella is actually a cross between Lilium davidii var. unicolor and Lilium amabile var. luteum.

The lovely ‘Citronella’. Not fragrant, but I let it in my garden anyway.

‘Black Beauty’ (from 1957) is another lily that looks as if it should be a species – but it isn’t, although it’s often sold as one by less-knowledgeable vendors. ‘Black Beauty’ is a hybrid of Lilium speciosum and Lilium henryi, made by Leslie Woodriff.

One of my personal favorites, ‘African Queen‘(1958)  is also listed. I got my own ‘African Queen’ bulbs there. I also tried their version of Lilium formosanum (a species lily from Taiwan).

Elegant, fragrant ‘African Queen’

While the prices at Old House Gardens aren’t as cheap as some places, you get value for the money . The lavishly floriferous quality, and the huge, honking size of their bulbs – prove that Scott Kunst and company are dyed-in-the-wool bulbomaniacs. If the mouthwatering descriptions of  about twenty lilies hasn’t already proved that.

The Lily Garden  is a site (and catalogue) offered by someone who suffers the most serious condition of plant mania: a breeder. And not just any breeder, but Judith Freeman, whose ‘Silk Road’ is only the latest of her lilies to make the big time. Her ‘Tiger Babies’  lilies, a delicious confection of fragrant peach tigerlily lookalikes, has been on my list of desired ones for some time. Maybe you think I’m getting off the subject, talking about newer lilies. But ‘Tiger Babies‘, while relatively new,  have now been around for thirty years, as Freeman’s site informs us (and she should know).

If many of Freeman’s progeny have become classics in the lily world, that’s not be so surprising: Freeman did her apprenticeship under Jan de Graaf in Oregon, and was once married to Ed McRae, another famous lily breeder. That makes her a sort of royalty in the lily-breeding world.  She’s still at it, and offers us the benefit of her labors, as well as cultural instructions (wouldn’t you rather get these from someone who’s actually been out in the field growing lilies for a long time?), lists of lily bloom times, plus some species offerings at reasonable prices. She even includes lilies that are easy from seed, a useful list for some of us who have fruitlessly tried with lily seeds over and over.

Telos Rare Bulbs is a site that specializes in species (which I always think of as the ultimate in an heirloom plant). They don’t have a large selection of lilies on their page of native bulbs from the Western USA – but they have two native lilies I have never seen offered in bulb form and have not been able to grow from seed. They have a lot of other native bulbs, too – both to the Western US, and to South America and South Africa. You’ll find a lot of selections here that you won’t see anywhere else.

Some of these catalogues offer spring-planted bulbs, and some fall-planted lily bulbs. Some offer both. Which is best? I suspect that has to do with where you live. For those who live in extreme climates or just want to get their bulbs in for that instant satisfaction, spring-planted bulbs seem to work well. But while I have spring-planted lily bulbs and had it turn out well (it was one of those shallow relationships I was talking about, with Nerone lily), I find that more often, my spring-planted lilies are stunted and tortured-looking. A fall and winter of establishing their roots and getting some good nutrition really works for them. Perhaps for some of you in other climates, it works differently?

And perhaps, as a contribution to the public weal, you can contribute other good lily sources? I’d  especially like to hear from people in other countries (although I’m always anxious to fuel my passion with more lily sources for my own use). When I was searching around for lily sites, I found myself becoming somewhat morose that I wasn’t living in Australia or New Zealand. They have some good-looking lily sites.

Emerging lily…

Why do I grow tulips in the woods?

I started growing tulips, and other spring bulbs, because I was living in a low-water situation. Ten people on a 2 ½ gpm well. For those of you not familiar with wells, that’s not a lot of water for ten people, especially if they have gardens. Several times a summer, the tank would run dry, leading to tight-lipped (sometimes not so tight) comments about whoever had let the hose run or the faucet leak. A snippy irascible atmosphere settled over the land. For half a day or more, we lived dirty, with dry faucets and hoses.

I was the last person to arrive, so I knew that any garden I had would have to be very low-water.

At first I planted natives and herbs, favorite friends of mine for a long time. Natives, of course, are bred for my rainfall  and climate. Mediterranean plants come from the same kind of climate,  where it doesn’t rain in summer. So they are also excellent allies in low-water gardens.

Herbs are great, but I began hankering after flowers. As usual, I turned to my stacks of catalogues and books to research. And what I found – one of the great “duh” revelations of my life – was that most of the popular spring bulbs were either Mediterranean, or California natives. Which meant they didn’t need any extra water from me.

What are the bulbs that fall in these categories?

Well, of couse, tulips

and narcissus (a daffodil is a narcissus, but not all narcissi are daffodils)

hyacinths

calochortus of various species, some of which are sold in major bulb catalogues, some of which can be found only in specialty catalogues, or grown from seed.

crocus (both the species and larger, showier kinds)

and a number of others, including alliums, ornithogalum, tritelia, and scilla.

There are some bulbs whose genus includes both bulbs that like moisture and bulbs that can handle a lot of drought (fritillaries, iris, and lilies are some), but you can’t go wrong with the ones I’ve pictured above. They love drainage and hate summer water, and if you grow them in pots, the way I do, you can move them out of the way when the foliage starts to wither.

There really are 1001+ ways to save water with spring bulbs, if you count all their different species, varieties, and cultivars. If you plan carefully, you can have a feast of beautiful, low- to no-water flowers for months, and get them back the next year.

And now is a great time to buy bulbs. (If you don’t know where to buy them, check out my Spring Bulb Shopping series for some of the places I think are the best.) Some catalogues are still offering discounts for early orders, and the selection is the fullest it will ever be.

Low-water gardens can be beautiful, floriferous and yes, even lush. Bulbs will lighten your mood, enchant children and neighbors, and put tiny bits of glorious other dimensions into your life. Get bulbs. You’ll be glad you did.