Things came up

[Henry Fieldseth]

I bought a bunch of tubers from China last fall.

As predicted, most of them rotted.

Several of the ones listed as /Arisaema sikokianum/
did make it. Someone here tells me they are really /A.
engerli/; the flower while purple and white lacked the
impressive "golf ball" of the true /A. s./.

Only one of them bloomed for me, the others dying back
before flowering.

One of them, who grew a leaf then died, stayed in its
pot and was forgotten. Last week I dumped the
dried-out pot to see what was there. I found the
shriveled bulb with a live bud on top of it.

Does that mean that the ones that turned to mush may
have had a bit of living tissue that might have formed
a new bud underground? Maybe I shouldn't have dumped
them so soon?

It gives me hope that some of my failures might come
back in time....

A tiny one that was pictured next to a cigareete
lighter on Chen Yi's website miraculously survived as
well.

I left those bulbs in the packet they came in and
stored them in a root cellar. In March I potted up
most of the root cellar stuff, but missed the little
ones.

Then in June I found a plastic bag on the porch that
had green inside. The bag had the roots for the little
arisaema, a few gentians and a squill. The squill was
growing in the bag. The gentians had all rotted to
nothing. But the little arisaemas looked great, with
elongating sprouts.

I planted them in 50/50 peat/sand and they've come up
nicely. They're about twice the size of those pictured
but still cute, no flowers yet.

I had given up on my /A. dracontium/ when all of a
sudden there is all four feet of it where I hadn't
seen it two days before.

I've added a couple different /Pinellias/ to my garden
this spring. /P. tripartita/ has just started blooming
this week; /P. pedatisecta/ was bloming when I got it.

My seed-exchange packet arrived last week. Should
donations to cover postage go to Ray or Erik?

--Henry Fieldseth
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Zone 4-5

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