February bulbs signalling seasonal change

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Will my bulbs of February be the month when there are slim pickings, I wondered at the start of the month. But no. I begin to think that there may be no such months, in our garden at least.

A wedding posy largely comprised of auratums and gloriosas. The bride also chose to wear gloriosas in her hair.

February was marked by a bit of a rollover from January, notably auratum lilies, gloriosas and Scadoxus ssp multiflorus katharinae. All are excellent cut flowers. I knew the lilies were but I have never cut the scadoxus before and they show a remarkably long vase-life. This discovery was made because our middle child came home for a small, intimate wedding in the garden here – an event we never expected to see. In the spirit of this informal occasion where the vows were both heartfelt and a central part of the whole event, she did her own wedding flowers from the garden here. She made her posy and a smaller one for their two year old to carry as well as the vases for the long table while I did the big showy vases of OTT lilies – mostly auratums but with a few Lilium formasanum and belladonnas.

The ephemeral delight of a sea of tiny Leucojum autmnale – autumn snowflakes – in the rockery

Some bulbs are a fleeting delight. The daintiest, tiniest little flowers of the autumn snowflake – Leucojum autumnale – all bloom at once as harbingers of the change in season. The Worsleya procera came and went in the first ten days of the month. No less spectacular, the Paramongaia weberbaueri impressed with its debut performance this very week. I do not think it will have a long season in bloom.  

Moraea polystachya

Then I pondered the fact that many of the bulbs that I declare have a long season are in fact bulbs that we have in the garden in abundance, counted in the high hundreds. If we had 500 worsleya, they are likely to flower more in succession and might have me admiring their long season in bloom. That is the case with the blue Moraea polystachya just opening and likely to flower for a good couple of months. But it is not each individual moraea bulb that is flowering that long, although it does set buds that open successively. It is having many bulbs around which open for their weeks to star.

Belladonnas – showy but not choice

Some are short in season but somewhat glorious. The belladonnas – Amaryllis belladonna  -are more wildflower or roadside plant than one for cultivated garden but that does not diminish their charm on the day. They last well in a vase, too.

Crinum moorei var. in the woodland gardens

Crinum moorei variegated has spectacular foliage in late spring and early summer but the foliage starts to whiff off a bit, sometimes losing its variegation, as the perfect, white, scented blooms open. I would prefer it to time the foliage and the flowers to perfection but the gardener’s personal preference is irrelevant. It remains an excellent bulb, showy for a long period with the foliar lead-in followed by lovely blooms. We always grow it in the shade gardens because that foliage will burn in our bright summer sun.

Little Cyclamen hederifolium is all through the rockery and woodland margins – naturalised but never a problem

As the big blowsy bulbs of summer pass over, the autumn snowflakes are joined the by the dainty Cyclamen hederifolium which we have in abundance – decades of letting it gently seed around to naturalise.

A zephyranthes now, which was news to me. We have it in red and pink.

We have known this plant as Rhodophiala bifida, following on from a period of it being Hippeastrum bifida but apparently it was classed as Habranthus bifida prior to that; now, now it has been moved again to Zephyranthes bifida. I do hope it has found its forever home in the zephyranthes family. It doesn’t have a long season in flower; nor does it increase quickly but it is lovely in its time.

Nothing rare or unusual about this bulb but it is no longer a valotta, now being in the cyrtanthus family

Whereas what we once had as a valotta (and was it also once an habranthus?), is now to be known as Cyrtanthus elatus. I do try to be botanically accurate but it is not always easy to do so. For those railing against name changes, they may be inconvenient but there is scientific data to justify the reclassifications. I would assume it is all DNA-based these days.

Colchicums! Not autumn crocus, but I am not sure whether this is Colchicum autumnale from northern Europe or Colchicum speciosum from Turkey. I think we have both.

Haemanthus coccineus may be the most fleeting of all the late summer bulbs we grow, but mostly this plant is grown for its spectacular foliage, colloquially known as elephant ears. Colchicums, too, have a brief season but not as brief as the haemanthus. They are oft referred to as autumn crocus but that is not botanically correct at all.

The bulbs are telling us that we are on the cusp of summer turning to autumn.

Worsleya procera – choice but not prolific.

A surprise

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A paramongaia, no less, which does not seem to have a helpful common name

Well lookee here! Zach appeared brandishing this pot from one of our covered houses in amazement. I was equally astonished that Mark could dredge the species name from somewhere in the deep recesses of his memory, loosely connected to his remembering seeing its relative the pamianthe in flower at Jack Goodwin’s and that must have been at least 35 years ago.

This is in fact Paramongaia weberbaueri, native to Peru and Bolivia where it grows in harsh, dry, stony conditions. It looks a bit like a totally over the top daffodil on steroids. That flower is 20cm across and the trumpet is 10cm long. I measured. It must be night-scented because it was very strongly scented first thing this morning but only pleasantly scented later in the day.

Patience rewarded – the first flowering on our paramongaia

It goes so far back here that even Mark, with his elephantine memory when it comes to the source of plants, can’t recall who gave it to him but we have not seen it in flower before. It has been repotted occasionally down the years and we seem to have about 10 plants of it when he will have started with only one. That is enough for me to plant out half of them in the rockery to see it they like our conditions.

We have succeeded with its compatriot bulb, the Worsleya procera as a garden plant; the challenge now is to see if we can succeed with the paramongaia in the garden. This may take time. Ask me in ten or twelve years if we have them flowering in the rockery.

Even elderly Dudley may have been surprised by its appearance on the doorstep.

Baby kereru

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Soon after hatching – a far cry from its mature form

The kereru is our much-loved native wood pigeon. It was once a significant food source but is now fully protected and can not be hunted legally. Being a large, lumbering bird with small brain, I imagine it was easy to catch and an important source of protein in a country which lacked all mammals (bar two tiny bats that few have ever seen) in the days before colonisation brought both wild and farm animals.

They are a bird of beautiful plumage with a pigeon coo to be heard if you have them resident in your garden. But they are not at all beautiful or cute in the baby stage. Quail hatch out like the cutest little, feathered bumblebees, on the move very soon after hatching. Not the kereru.

Behold the beauty and care shown by the chaffinch as compared to the disgraceful kereru efforts

For starters, kereru parents should be ashamed of their nest-building skills. These consist of tossing a few twigs onto some sort of precarious branch and saying ‘that’ll do’. I have photographed exquisitely crafted nests by other native birds but not the kereru. They then lay a single egg and the ugliest baby hatches out and spends its first weeks perched precariously on its bunch of uncomfortable twigs.

It was a kereru almost taking us out as it flapped its way to gain altitude that drew attention to its nest in the Wisteria ‘Snow Showers’, all of 150cm off the ground. It is not a particularly safe spot; we fear Ralph the dog could possible reach it at a pinch. Se we are skirting around it and trying not to disturb it.

We don’t know exactly which day it hatched but this is likely a few days later

Zack spotted the scrawny little bebe about 10 days ago and came in saying, “Man that is an ugly, scrawny chick”. I couldn’t see it this week and feared it may have fallen out but no, it is still there. I photographed it yesterday morning. It is not much improved in the beauty stakes but I am sure its parents love it.

This is about 10 days later. Its looks have not improved a great deal since.

Below is a photo of one from earlier years. It has grown its feathers and is closer to fledging – a process that takes 5 to 6 weeks. There is only one chick per nest and it is a miracle any reach independence given the long process and the woeful quality of nest.

Here is one I prepared earlier, as they say on cooking shows. A fledgling kereru nesting in the tangerine tree.

I have shown the photo below before. In front of our picture window, we have a bamboo grid suspended to stop bird strike. Our double glazed windows reflect trees and sky and too many birds thought they could fly through, killing themselves on the glass. Window decals did not work. A kereru died before our eyes just centimetres from the decals. I didn’t want net curtains in this room so Mark constructed the bamboo grid. It works. We have not had birds die from striking this window since we hung the grid.

It is the bamboo grid you are looking at – not interfering with the view or the light but proven down many years to be enough to stop birds hitting the window.

It felt like a tragedy every time we found a dead bird, especially as they were often young ones learning to fly. All that time and two parents to raise just one chick a year only for it to die soon after on our windows. For the same reason, we would never have a mirror in the garden and we deplore that modern architectural trend of putting all windowed pavilions set amongst forest trees. Somebody must pick up the bird kill but it is rarely mentioned.

Still one of my favourite photos of this round chonk of a bird, in this case perched in Fairy Magnolia White.

Thanks to Zach for the three photos of our baby soon after hatching.

Summer Gold

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A field of sunflowers down the road from us caught my attention as the blooms opened. I speak of ‘down the road’ in rural terms. A couple of kilometres and a couple of roads and corners in-between but on my main route to town. When I stopped to photograph it on a grey day as the rain stopped, it was imbued with soft light and appeared almost mystical.

Italian sunflowers as opposed to local ones but really, they all came from the Americas to start with

I can only remember seeing three different fields of sunflowers. The first was in Italy, on the road from Sermoneta to the famed garden of Ninfa. It was industrial farming – commercial production for either seed or oil but that whole setting of a phalanx of sunflowers in the dry, arid landscape seemed imbued with the charm and romanticism that is steeped in the very ground and most things above in that pocket of rural Italy.

Heliotropism in action near Sermoneta, south of Rome

It was also the first time I saw en masse the characteristic of heliotropism – the habit of both foliage and young flowers following the sun during the day. I was amused by the following sentence in the Wikipedia article: ‘Sunflowers move back to their original position between the hours of 3am and 6am, and the leaves follow about an hour later.” That is very specific information. Apparently that movement stops when the flowers age and they settle to face the rising sun in the east.

Sunflowers in Huirangi, ‘across the bridge’
Across this bridge

The second sunflower meadow was, as we say, ‘just across the bridge’ from us in Huirangi. We can cut across the historic swing bridge and be there in minutes. Our eldest daughter, grandson and I first went about 3 summers ago and were pretty impressed by the appeal of the place as a destination. An Instagram event, daughter declared. A very popular Instagram location at that with hay bales, strategically based old tractor or two, provision to select and cut your own sunflowers and I am pretty sure there was icecream. It was clear that others were as delighted as we were at being in the midst of fields of sunflowers.

Their Facebook page tells me that their season is later this year and that they are opening next weekend and the following two weekends, through til March 1.

Tikorangi sunflowers

The third sunflower meadow down our road is different. It does not seem to be either for commercial harvest or as a visitor destination. It appears to be part of a regenerative agriculture system. The sunflowers are of a squatter physique – lower growing and sturdier – and  interplanted with a white flowering brassica and probably other selected plants as well. I didn’t feel I could scale the fence to check out the pasture composition but did spot the yarrow and blue chicory in the adjacent paddock pasture so it would seem more herbal ley than monoculture.

Tikorangi sunflower meadow, seemingly part of a regenerative approach to farming

We live in an intensive dairy farming area, one which grows grass all year round in our milder climate which means stock graze outside all the time. It is often described as a ‘green desert’ because the main focus is on encouraging maximum grass growth, aided by nitrogen-heavy fertilisers. The contrast from that to herbal ley and sunflower plantings could not be more extreme and I am sure the meadow contributes a huge amount more to a sustainable ecosystem rich in biodiversity and feeding beneficial insects and microbes.

In solidarity with Ukraine

The common sunflower is Helianthus annuus – helios being Greek for sun and annuus meaning it is an annual. Curiously, given that all helianthus are native to north, central and just a few to south America, the annual sunflower is now the national flower for Ukraine. I am guessing it is a commercial staple for that country, which is a grain bowl of Europe.

Like many families, we grew sunflowers with the children when they were young and into competitive school gardening. To this day I remember the sunflowers one of them was growing, towering over 2 metres tall, only to fall in an overnight storm. Disappointment seared on my motherly brain.

Helianthus, I believe, and more garden friendly than the big annual sunflowers
Not helianthus at all. The orange flowers on the left are heleniums while the yellow stars are Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’.

Nowadays, I grow a few of the different, smaller, perennial species in the summer gardens. There are around 70 different species of helianthus, or sunflowers, including Jerusalem artichoke. I have a mental block when it comes to remembering the differences between helianthus, heliopsis and helianthemum (and that is without going to helichrysums, heliotropes and other plants starting with heli). Similarly, I have trouble each summer remembering the differences between some of the helianthus, echinaceas, rudbeckia, heliopsis and ratibida and which is which in the summer gardens. But I am pretty sure these are helianthus with either species or cultivar names that I have even less chance of remembering when I struggle to remember they are helianthus.

Helianthus from an earlier March season. The lower one I think is the species whose name I have recorded somewhere – I just can’t remember where – while the upper photo is a selected dwarf form which has a cultivar name that is recorded in the same place as the missing species name.

Summer gold, indeed.

Here is a photo I prepared earlier that may show why I struggle to remember which is which and that is without adding yellow echinaceas to the mix – left to right is Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstonne’ , helenium, Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’, the only helianthus in the line up and Ratibida pinnata

Bold Bulbs of January

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While I think of early spring and autumn as Peak Bulb Blooming Time here, January must take the crown of Big Show-off Bulb Time. With big bulbs as well as a big display, notably the lilies and scadoxus.

Mark’s Aurelian hybrids in yellow and apricot orange.

Beat the drum to announce lily time. The month starts with the yellow and apricot-orange Aurelians, for which I give full credit to Mark. We have never made them available on the market so any Aurelians you buy won’t look quite look ours and probably will have fewer flowers to the stem. They are truly lovely in their 2 to 3 week season. Nicely scented too.

Auratum hybrids – all outward facing

As the Aurelians pass their peak, the auratums hit their stride and they are an astounding sight in full sun and in the open woodland areas of the Avenue Gardens. We have a few, as I say in a major understatement. Some date back to Felix who dabbled with lilies in the 1960s and 70s, and even further to Les Jury (his older brother) selecting for deep red shades amongst others, but particularly for outward-facing flowers. Upward-facing lilies are probably better for florists but they also gather dust and leaves and suffer more from pollen staining so they are not as good as garden plants. We select for plants that perform as garden plants.

A 30 metre border of auratum lilies plus a whole lot more in other areas. Did I mention we have a few?

Back in our mailorder days, we named and sold a few of Felix’s selections but the more recent hybrids from Mark have never been put into commercial production. Pure and simple, he raised many plant from controlled crosses for our garden (by which is meant he chose the parents and manually pollinated rather than harvesting wild pollinated seed). He was after outward-facing blooms, big flowers, strong stems and a range of colours from white through pinks to what passes for red in the auratum family. He succeeded in this endeavour and every year, the auratums are a sensory joy with both looks and heady fragrance.

We have a few Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katharinae too.

The Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katharinae continue to thrill and delight us with their sheer scale here. I am not sure I have much else to say that I have not said before. This particular patch is one of our unique features. It is more usual for these bulbs to be nurtured as single specimens in a pot. While they have naturalised here, their spread is not on such a scale as to be described ‘invasive’; they are easy to control but we are fine with them gently popping up in nearby areas. As a general rule, we favour complex scenes of mixed plants rather than mass plantings, so much the better if they are choice plants finding their own happy place.

Gently spreading in the woodland
Gloriosa superba in a dry border that never gets watered and the only moisture is runoff from the concrete beside

It is also gloriosa time. While they are commonly referred to as climbing lilies, the lily connection is but distant and the colchicums are much closer relatives. Gloriosas are highly prized by many until they multiply to the point where they become a bit of a weed. We are at that point. They are a handy plant to have in super dry conditions like the narrow, hot, dry border at the front of our house where little else thrives. I am not convinced about them in other areas and am trying to restrict their spread. Also, I feel they ramble as much as climb. I wouldn’t mind if they would climb neighbours to hold themselves up but they are more inclined to sprawl and need staked areas to keep them more upright.

Crinum moorei var rates as a choice bulb for its foliage alone, even before the white flowers appear
It may be C. moorei (non variegated) or it may be one of the other species. Nowhere near as choice but pretty enough in casual woodland

The stars of our crinums are the many bulbs we have of Crinum moorei variegated but they are only just starting to put up their pure white flower spikes this week so they can wait til February’s instalment. We have other crinums flowering soft pink. I have never unravelled the different species; Mark tells me we have two different species, one of which is the common form of moorei (non-variegated) and one of which is a different species that he has forgotten the name of and I never knew so its identity may remain forever a mystery. These all-green foliaged plants are rangy in foliage, utilitarian but useful bulbs for shady areas and pretty in bloom.

Crocosmias – pretty but most are on the rampant side
Tigridias – we have them with and without spots in white, red, yellow and a variety of pink hues

In the showy/utilitarian/potentially weedy category, we are flowering tigridias (jockey caps), crocosmia and zephyranthes. Tigridias hail from central America, Tigridia pavonia which is the common garden species  is from that area around Mexico and Columbia. Crocosmia are a grasslands bulb from southern Africa.

Zephyranthes or habranthus? I was going to say at least we can call them rain lilies but they are not even lilies because they belong to the amaryllis family instead.

The zephyranthes are from the Americas, oft referred to as ‘rain lilies’ because flowering is triggered by rain. Zephyranthes or habranthus, you may ask. As I did. I have no idea now. We have always called them zephyranthes but ten years ago when I wrote this piece they appear to have been reclassified as habranthus. Now, a decade on, it appears that habranthus have been swept up – along with sprekelias – and moved back to zephyranthes.  This is all based on botanical analysis and DNA and who am I to challenge that? I can continue with zephyranthes which is easier for this old brain to remember because we used to have a family dog named Zephyr. These are plants for the casual, sunny areas of the garden – more wildflower than tidy bedding plant.

A casual planting of a smaller flowered auratum and tigridias beside the drive in the Iolanthe Garden

As if the disappointing summer is not bad enough, I see we already have the first flowers opening on Cyclamen hederafolium and even the autumn snowdrop. Sigh.

Special thoughts to those in the north and on the east coast who have been hit hard by extreme weather in the past week. We see you, we hear you, we feel for you even as we know that is about as useful as Trump’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ or, in the rural vernacular, as useful as tits on a bull. May the weather settle soon that you can start the process of recovery.

Crocosmia – possible ‘Star of the East’. Unlike the others we grow, this has exceptionally large flowers, is VERY slow to increase and never in any danger of becoming a weed or wildflower. This is why it is allowed in the rockery.