Hi Jim, I adore martagons. I would not say that they divide rampantly, but I don't lose them either. It might be helpful if you could describe exactly what you mean by yours not thriving. I suspect that in the case of humidity vs. heat it may be a combination of the two. In Ithaca, we get some, to me, serious humidity, in the eighty and ninety percent range, so that we have to run fans all night in order to sleep. As well temps stay in the nineties for periods of time. Probably not so bad as down where you are. Most of my martagons are in woodland conditions, mulched with woodchips, in the company of other liliums, arisaema, hostas, trilliums, and Spring ephemerals. All survive although some do not bulk up as I might wish. I do sense that martagons relish cooler conditions that the rest of the hundreds of lilies here. A number of the asiatics from Chen Yi have either disappeared or stick to just the one bulb. Conditions here are not like the Himalayas...smile. Cheerio, Marcia Meigs in frigid Ithaca , NY, USA Z5 In a message dated 1/15/2011 4:13:56 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
As a gardener who is always trying new plants, many of which are unlikely to succeed under my conditions. I’m also interested in ways to retain plants adapted to climates very different to my own. Speaking very broadly, the easiest plants to accommodate in this regard are herbaceous plants which are not in active growth during the winter and not cold hardy enough to survive without protection of some sort. Herbaceous plants of comparable winter hardiness but which are in active growth during the winter form another group for which, under my conditions, cold frames have often provided an acceptable solution. After you’ve been doing this for a while, it becomes apparent that it is a lot easier to accommodate slightly cold tender plants than to accommodate plants which do not thrive in heat and humidity. Other than Nearing frames, I don’t know of any practical solution for such plants. I don’t consider putting plants into the refrigerator a practical solution, although I’ve done it for certain plants. Here’s why I’m bringing this up: where I live, in the greater Washington, D.C. area, I grow a few martagon lilies but am not notably successful with this group. I’m not the only one, and the traditional explanation for their poor performance is that they can’t take the heat. Until recently, I never much challenged that explanation. But I’ve learned that martagons are grown successfully in the State of Victoria, Australia. One Melbourne area grower I’ve had a bit of correspondence with experiences temperatures in the range of 30-35º C (86-95 F) in the shade, but on rare occasions up to 45 º C (113 F) in the shade and even higher in the sun. But there is one big difference between here and there: the relative humidity during Melbourne’s hot season is about 5%; here it’s closer to 100% at times. So I’ve changed my lament from “blame the heat” to “blame the humidity”. If it culprit is the humidity, can anyone explain in layman’s terms the physiological basis for that? Jim McKenney [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://_www.jimmckenney.com_ (http://www.jimmckenney.com/) BLOG! _http://mcwort.blogspot.com/_ (http://mcwort.blogspot.com/) Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin _http://www.pvcnargs.org_ (http://www.pvcnargs.org/) Webmaster Potomac Lily Society _http://www.potomaclilysociety.org_ (http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/) _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
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