What's growing

[J.E. Shields]

Greetings all,

We arrived home from our two week visit to Europe on Sunday evening.  We
did not get to see any Arisaema while in Holland; but in Switzerland, Bruno
Matter had a few interesting plants blooming at the University of Basel
Botanic Garden.  I took slides of a couple -- an Amorphophallus bulbifer
and a strange, tiny little thing called Mangonia tweediana (Araceaae) from
Brazil.  Bruno also had a couple of Arisaema in bloom, including an
unidentified species from Thailand; I took a shot of it as well.

Eventually after I get the films back from processing, I will scan some of
the slides and post to the IBS_Images list.

Here at home, I found that the new bulbs of Arisaema candidissimum and A.
fargesii, planted in April, have still not come up.  The 3-year-old bulbs
of AA. sikokianum, ringens, and thunbergii are still blooming but A.
sanzensoo is showing only one leaf this year, and no sign of an inflorescence.

One of the bulbs of A. triphyllum I got from Gene Bush a couple of years
ago is now huge -- the leaves are at least 3 ft tall.  The calyx is light
green with lighter green stripes.  I'll have to get a picture of it today.

I was very happily surprised to find that I had after all not totally
succeeded in killing my brand new seedlings of Zantedeschia albomaculata
last summer after they went dormant.  Out of ca. 90 - 100 seedlings
sprouted last spring, I have so far about 35 plants coming up in the
community pots in the cold frame.  I am looking forward to a surfeit of Z.
albomaculata in the near future, all raised from wild collected seeds
purchased from Rachel Saunders.

Do Arisaema species, especially those I have mentioned (ringens,
sikokianum, and thunbergii), ever produce offsets?  Those that I planted 3
years ago do not seem to have done so.

Regards,
Jim

*************************************************
Jim Shields             USDA Zone 5             Shields Gardens, Ltd.
P.O. Box 92              WWW:    http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA                   Tel. +1-317-896-3925