early summer bulbs | Tikorangi The Jury Garden

While the rhodohypoxis and Sinningia (syn Gesneria) cardinalis flower on in abundance, it is time to turn to the bulbs that have made their annual appearance in this month of December.

Sprawling might be the best description of Albuca nelsonii in flower

We have always grown the large Albuca nelsonii and its green and white bells have often featured in any Christmas floral staging I do because it cuts well. I included it when I planted the Court Garden and I worried about its somewhat unwieldy habits. Staking those tall, curvy flower spikes was… challenging, shall I say? All that changed when I looked up the albucas in an attempt to get a species name on its half-sized cousin with very similar flowers. I found a reliable site that described the characteristic of the plant that the flower spikes naturally become pendulous to prostrate. Why fight nature? I now allow them do as they wish.

Apparently useful for warding off sorcerers when mixed with one of the red hot poker species

Randomly, I also found the information that an “infusion made from Albuca nelsonii bulbs and tubers of Kniphofia species, known as icacane, is taken as an emetic as protection against sorcery.” Just in case you need that handy hint.

Albuca batteniana, I believe. If you look carefully, you will see a few tufts of orange that appear as the flowers open but disappears soon after.

Often mistaken for A. nelsonii is its half-sized cousin. As far as I can make out, this is Albuca batteniana. The little orange tuft – actually the calyx that holds the petals – that appears at the top of the flower spike when it first starts opening is a distinctive characteristic. The flowers, bulbs and foliage are very similar to A. nelsonii and it is a better-behaved garden specimen in that somewhat suburban, tidy manner. Its flower spikes do not lie down on the job; they stay obediently erect. It is a good garden plant which I have used in the twin borders but it doesn’t make me smile as the more exbuberant and wayward big A. nelsonii does.

These days, the abundant blue mist that shrouds the rockery is not the bothersome geissorhiza, about which I have written often. It has taken years for me to encourage the dainty Cyanella capensis with its tiny blue flowers across a long blooming season. Only now am I thinking I may be getting too much of it. At least its bulbs are large and easy to remove. I just have to be a bit more vigilant on deadheading it because it is spreading by seed, not bulb.

Arisaema tortuosum holds its head above the foliage, unlike many of the arisaemas. It also spreads too enthusiastically if the seed heads are not removed.

I have missed the arisaemas in previous months’ bulb articles. We have a reasonable range of arisaemas, some of which are much more choice than others. But it is really only the easy and common A. tortuosum that makes me think of them as the meerkats of the plant world. I deadhead them thoroughly and weed out strays because I do not want the alert meerkats of plant world all over the place but in their allotted space, they are an annual delight. And quite bizarre.

There is not much subtlety in Gladiolus daleni

Gladiolus – there are a few that I appreciate, mostly species. And a few that I tolerate. The overbred, overblown hybrids of Dame Edna fame have never appealed but I accommodate the ones that date back to Mark’s mum. As she died back in 1986, I feel a begrudging respect for those that have survived down the years and they seem to fit in okay to the exuberant and largely uncurated floral abundance of the Iolanthe garden. Gladiolus daleni has been in flower for a few weeks now but the star this week is the gorgeous red Gladiolus papilio X ‘Ruby’. One of the problems with gladiolus, though, is that they open their flowers in succession so no matter how attractive the freshly unfurled buds are, they share their stem with ones that have withered, browned and died. It seems a design flaw to me.

The four gladioli on the left are all survivors from Mimosa Jury, top right is the amazing burgundy of papilio x ‘Ruby’ and beside it the usual species form of Gladiolus papilio. Lower right is daleni which is clearly a breeder parent of the one on its left which is larger and more coral coloured with a less obvious yellow flare.

The topic of gladiolus reminds me of this passage I wrote in a book review some years ago. I am still quite proud of it.

By the way, Penguin (Publishers) , it is time you dispensed with the auto spellchecker. The author of this book winning prizes for exhibiting her Gladys rivals a previous author counselling readers to throw out their Algarve. The author may have been using the colloquial term of gladdies, but even that is inappropriate for the text on page 164 and 165 where poor Gladys has her name taken in vain repeatedly. Gladiolus stands for one, gladioli for more than one. Gladdie is the vernacular, not the common name. Gladys is somebody’s grandmother.

What we call a Christmas lily here is Lilium regale

The first of the Christmas lilies is in bloom and the buds are fattening on the golden Aurelian lilies. But I think we will leave the lilies for January when the auratums star.

There are of course, other December bulbs in flower. That is a Phaedranassa cinerea above (great name!). From Ecuador, no less. I can’t think we grow many plants from Ecuador. And what we still call Urecolina peruviana (from Peru, presumably) but may be more accurately called Stenomesson miniatum blooms on. One day I might sort out which bulbs we have are South American as opposed to the majority that are from South Africa.

Stay safe and our thoughts go to Australians in this week. Mass shootings are so rare in this part of the world that it shakes our nations to the core when they happen.

“Good thing we are not drying out too much,” Mark observed wryly as we faced another day of rain. This is a variant on his usual “Good news! The drought has broken”. While technically summer, our very wet spring continues. I entertained myself by doing a bit of a stocktake of bulbs in flower in mid-December and assembling one of my flower boards.

Cardiocrinum giganteum

December is not notable for peak bulb season. Not at all. Though if you add in corms and tubers, the census would include such things as irises and dahlias, some of which are in flower now. In the big growers, the Cardiocrinum giganteum plants are very handsome indeed and have finally naturalised themselves, gently seeding down. We respect their wishes and generally accommodate them where they grow. It is, after all, reputed to be a seven year wait to get the flowering spike and they are pretty undemanding during that time. The flower spikes are three or four metres tall with large, fragrant trumpets so it is worth the wait.

Arisaema dahaiense

Arisaema candidissimum

I write about the Arisaema dahaiense every year which is an indication that it has settled in well here and it keeps reappearing. The same cannot be said for all arisaema species. It is a very curious bloom indeed. Also opening its first blooms this week is the prettier A. candidissum – the summer white, often with soft pink striping.

Dactylorhiza maculata

Less well known in this country (though common enough in its homelands of northern Europe and the UK) is the ground orchid Dactylorhiza maculata, which is very charming, undemanding and flowers well until the heat of summer knocks it back.

Lilium martagon

It hasn’t been so easy to get Lilium martagon established. I think it wants a colder, drier winter and probably a drier summer than we can offer it so it has been satisfying to get it growing well in one area of the garden. January will bring us the OTT auratum lilies in abundance, but at the moment it is the pretty charm of the martagons that brings us pleasure.

And so to the smaller flowered bulbs.

From left to right, we have two albucas (more shortly), Habranthus probably andersonii, Phaedranassa cinerea, Gesneria cardinalis, Stenomesson miniatum, Cyanella capensis, Gladiolus papilio, Tritelia laxa may be ‘Queen Fabiola’, the trusty and undemanding rhodohypoxis and, just to confound, the first blooms on Cyclamen hederafolium – that harbinger of autumn. Inevitably, I have since found additional bulbs in flower that I failed to add to this collection but they can remain absent from this roll call. I have written up most of those photographed over the years – hence the blue links. I gathered the cyanella seed some years ago and raised it in pots before replanting more extensively in the rockery where it is now a charming haze of blue over a long period, without threatening the wellbeing of other bulbs.

The tritelia – we used to think it was a brodiaea – is an American wildflower bulb, though named for the queen of Belgium, which is curious. We had assorted pots of it kicking around the nursery for years until I gathered them all up and tucked them in around the garden. This year, they are looking particularly pretty and are probably our dominant flowering bulb at this time.

Not A. canadensis as we and many other gardeners thought

About the albucas … help! We have always known the smaller yellow albuca as A. canadensis and it has long been Mark’s favoured example of the folly of allowing the first name bestowed upon a plant to remain in perpetuity, even when it is inaccurate and a mistake. Canadensis means it comes from Canada but it doesn’t. Albucas are another South African genus. Now it appears that it is not Albuca canadensis at all but is more likely to be A. flaccida instead. We are by no means alone in having had it under the wrong name, but we certainly perpetuated the error by selling it under that name in times gone by.

The bigger growing white with green stripes is more of a mystery. Indeed, I am sure we thought it was an ornithogalum for a while so maybe it is one of the varieties that has been transferred from that genus to the other. It could be that it is A. nelsonii but equally there are other albuca species that look similar. If anybody is able to assist us with unravelling its identification, that would be helpful. It may be a matter of knowing which albuca species we have in this country. In our conditions, it is evergreen and has a very large bulb with papery covering, generally flowering early to mid-summer.

Big picture gardening looks great in photographs and can please the eye. Bulbs more often give the small picture detail which delights the curious gardener and adds many more layers of interest.

Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Tag Archives: early summer bulbs

Bulbs of December. In time for Christmas.

The flowering bulbs of mid December

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