general alpine plant comments/questions here!
I photographed this in June (I think) on the high slopes of Mt. Eddy near the CA OR line: it's Dicentra pauciflora, that also goes by D. nevadensis and is scattered pretty widely from the Siskiyous through the Sierra. It blooms very early, and must be a lot rarer than Dicentra uniflora, which gets all the press. I have a hunch it's a stinker to grow!
I don't think I've ever published this pic: it's from my old Eudora garden where we successfully grew Lepidium nanum a number of years. I'm always intrigued that people say it has inconspicuous or unattractive flowers. I think it's cute! Alas, this is as well as I've done with it. I would like to try it again, only in one of my dryland troughs where I do much better with these little morsels..
Like Panayoti, I hate to see an empty thread. Phacelia sericea is the only one of this genus I've tried....and not with success. They either rot over the winter or simply give-up the ghost mid-summer. Not sure what I'm doing wrong since in the wild, they seem to tolerate some moisture. Oh well, I alsways enjoy them in the wilds of Alberta when visiting that area.
Back in 1999 I received NARGS seed of Saponaria cypria collected in the Troodos Mts, Cyprus, found between 1350-1950 meters. It turned out to be a gem of a plant that is perfectly hardy and easy to grow. Not only that, it flowers in late July to August, when little else is blooming.
In general I feel that most of 'our' words are artificial constructs, most being bastardizations of Greek and Latin, or Latin endings tacked on to proper nouns, and as such pronunciation is arbitrary as long as everyone knows what's being talked about.
I know the subject of this hybrid has been beat to death on Alpine-L (I think)...The plant is widely available. I post this picture as a caveat: it is dazzling, but the plant must grow in rich, moist, humusy soil to perform like this. In my shady rock garden where most Heuchera and many auricula penstemons thrive (and all manner of daphnes) this sulked. This is in Sandy Snyder's fabulous garden, on the north side of her house: there is no tree root competition, and lots of Sanguinaria canadensis 'Multiplex', Cyclamen europaeum, wild gingers and suchlike thriving.
If you are growing Z. garrettii, chances are the source could have been the same as these, on the Wyoming-Idaho border where I collected it almost 20 years ago. It's amusing to think the only really widespread common name for this is California fuchsia, and of course this is technically a "willowherb" nowadays, and here it comes from a near alpine locality where temperatures drop to -40F most winters (some fuchsia that!). It has opened its first flower in Colorado in late May one year, but always by the end of June--by far the earliest of the genus to bloom.
Somehow it seems wrong that no one has posted on this rather important little genus...
I don't have pictures of Eritrichium pauciflorum on this computer...I will post on that some time. It was the universal forget me not of the Mongolian mountains that grew by the thousands in all manner of turf and meadows, screes and tundra..I did get quite a bit of seed of it and shared it with some alpine nurseries. I have a fantasy it will be an easy alpine.
Holubec's seed list from Patagonia has been added to his website.
http://www.villevekster.com/patagoniaseeds.html
If only I didn't have far too many seeds already!
Thanks, Mark! I'll head over to the scutellaria post directly.
Well, I don't have any satureja (don't even know if it will be hardy) or teucrium at present, but I felt it was about time that was amended!