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Grow Flower: Propagation and grow flowering: sow seed in late spring, in well-drained, rich soil. If seed is not required, remove the flower stems as they appear. Self-sown seedlings will grow flower freely if the plants are allowed to flower; if not, propagate them by dividing the parent plants approximately every three years or so. The seeds are ready to harvest when they have turned a gray-green color and have hardened. Cut off the whole flower head and dry slowly indoors.
When Farrer wrote of Meconopsis his thoughts were of a very beautiful flower, a flower that had become, like edelweiss, a legend in its own horticultural time. For these blossoms are four-petaled (sometimes up to ten) poppies with many golden stamens and colors that run the gamut from sky blue to pale blue to deep purple and an occasional lavender. But they are flowers that, unfortunately, could be most po¬litely termed as 'difficult to grow flower."See Also Discovered The Flower In Sumatra:Then in his fascinating book, In for a Penny: A Prospect of Kew Gardens, by Wilfred Blunt (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978), again I found mention of the clan.
Blunt, in describing the Orangery at Kew, refers to a life-sized drawing of A. titanum, 18 feet long and some 15 feet wide that was presented to the gardens by an Italian named Beccari who discovered the flower in Sumatra in 1878. "If Puritans contrived its removal,' muses Blunt, "surely in this permissive age it could be reinstated ..." and in the same volume appears the following description of the first flowering at Kew and the plant's initial discovery:
"... [Tjhis obscene-looking plant was discovered ... in the mountains of Sumatra, where it grows to a height of seventeen feet and makes a load for a dozen porters." (This description proved to me that the larger plant was beyond my grasp.) "The plant, which flow¬ered at Kew in 1890 and was 'one of the sensations of the London season' was a mere dwarf, less than seven feet tall; but its stench—'a mixture of rotten fish and burnt sugar'—soon drove the curious out of the Orchid House and into the fresh air.'
I should have taken my cue from this description of its scent and gone on to better things, but in the spring of 1980 I found a source for the devil's tongue and immediately sent for the largest tuber I could procure.
On The Other Hand See Size Flower:There need be no question in your mind about the market for good flower photography. One of the big slide film dis¬tributors has found flower fanciers the most consistent buy ers of all among slide collectors, even though the pictures offered are strictly of specimen flowers. These cannot possibly have the same appeal as pictures of flowers grown by the buyer in his own soil. The only flower fancier who is not an eager prospect for pictures of his blooms is one who has never seen a color slide transparency of a beautiful flower projected. A close-up of a lovely flower on a screen is a sight to make anyone, flower lover or not, gasp at its beauty.
If you have the room, try one of the numerous lily naturalizing mixtures offered by many nurseries. For a very reasonable amount, you can buy 30-inch-tall, blooming-size seedlings, in colors of red, orange, yellow, white, cream, or pink.
For bloom in mid- to late September use the fine Lilium mosanum with its elegant, 6-inch-long white atop 4 to 6 foot si Or try L formosanum 'Little Snow White', a cultivar from Tail with the same size flower but on a 9-inch stem. If grown from sown in September, this lily will bloom the following summer. It makes an excellent pot plant. |
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