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"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up" Mark Twain Iris unguicularis 'Walter Butt' ...
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Illahe Nursery and Gardens My little nursery is located in the South Salem hills at an elevation of about 600'. In following the sage...
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Fritillaria eastwoodiae I've always loved plants named after Alice Eastwood. My old mentor Jack Poff would tell stories about her, I ...
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Anyone?.....Anyone?..... $15 credit toward bulb purchases off this years offering to the first person to guess correctly and enter it int...
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Please visit: www.illaherareplants.com to see the new catalog! We are phasing out this old blog server so you need to go visit the new ...
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Fritillaria liliacea- wonderful, early Californian, I really do like the native left coast species. Fritillaria hermonis ssp. amana Frit...
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Summer must be coming because the Gladiolus are starting to bloom! Gladiolus tristis The marsh Afrikaner This is going ...
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The fall bloomers are starting. I had a nice talk with the department of agriculture today and I will be proceeding with international sh...
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Fritillaria whittallii Mr. Charles Hervey Grey in the three volume Hardy Bulbs 1938 has this to say: A native of Asia minor, collected b...
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The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. Don Marquis Narcissus hispanicus ssp. bujei Chilly ...
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Another season in the books!
Monday, July 9, 2012
The Crinite Mariposa Lily
Monday, July 2, 2012
Where the sea breaks it's back
Georg Steller was a man whose name has immortalized some of the rarest creatures of flora and fauna on earth. He was also the first white man to ever set foot on Alaskan soil. Whether or not that is a good thing is beyond debate, but he was a top notch naturalist and botanist and without him some now extinct creatures may never have even been known to man. Stellars sea cow being the prime example.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
The Clay Mariposa
Monday, June 11, 2012
Crocus kosaninii
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Calochortus longebarbatus
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Calochortus superbus
Monday, June 4, 2012
Peonia rockii
Monday, May 14, 2012
For whom the bells toll?
The bells toll for the potatoes this past week.
Good weather makes for bad blogs, unpredictable weather makes for no blogs!
Good weather makes for bad blogs, unpredictable weather makes for no blogs!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Rock Midgets and Arroyo's part III
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
rock midgets and arroyo's part II
Cammisonia brevipes- desert evening primrose
This shot was taken above the Wildrose canyon campground where I spent one of the windiest nights of my life, every gust seeming to flatten the fiberglass pole reinforced dome tent. The next morning the sun was out, the wind was calm and the snow capped peaks of the Panamint mts. framed nicely in the distance.
This is the mono lake tufa formations, man what would you giv to have that in your backyard to grow Androsace, and crusty Saxifrage on? So a little geology here: These deposits were formed when the water level in the lake was much higher and calcium rich springs seeped to the surface, the calcium formed deposits like these and they only became visible when Mono lake was tapped into as a water source for communities around LA and agricultural interests around the area.
Just an up close shot of the tufa with some crazy lichens making a foothold on the former spring water turned rock. As an aside, I saw my first Jack rabbit at this site and while I chased it around for the better part of a half hour I never did get a clear photograph....amazing creature though, bigger than my cat and twice as mean looking.
Echinocactus polycephalus
Botanizing the Death Valley region is only for the sure footed, one tumble onto this beast and you would regret ever having ventured out of the comfort of you own abode.
Opuntia basialaris
Of course tamer cacti do abound like this beaver tail specimen.
So the Fritillarias are starting to finish, the Allliums are just coming on and it will be a few weeks before the Calochortus start to peak. So if you are here strictly for bulbs......bugger off! I'm going to do a few more installments of my desert section, because I like diversity and I'm still figuring out what recessive alleles might have passed from purdyi to biflora and what dominant traits may have led Jane to believe the parentage should be marked as such.......I'm also stuyding backcrossing as I believe a breeding program is in order for this complex.....bear with me and I will enlighten you about my education in the coming weeks.....but for now, please enjoy the ongoing saga of death valleys 100 year bloom.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Rock Midgets and Arroyo's part 1
We are going to have to take a brief respite from bulb blogging tonight. In the interest of me refreshing my memory on the intricacies of plant breeding and to sort out the complications of Jane's bee hybridized Fritillari purdyi and Fritillaria biflora crosses. I'm going to stop and gloat a bit about my greenhouse full of death valley monkeyflowers.
Mimulus rupicola
The Famed Death Valley Monkeyflower
At last, blooming in my greenhouse, among the rarest in the genera and found only in the Southern California region of Death Valley and the Sky Island mountains. I looked for this plant for so long, through all the seed catalogs. I asked Ron Ratko if he could make a special trip. Then I made the trip myself to Death Valley to look for it, but it always eluded me. I searched Hanupah Canyon for a whole day, climbing from 300' in elevation to well over 3000'. Picking my way through barrel cactus and huge patches of the gleaming white Encelia farinosa. I never could find the preferred habitat of craggy limestone cliffs.
Death Valley is an old rift, once a giant lake, now split into the Panamint Mountains and the Amargosa range.
This still goes down as one of the most magnificent campsites I've ever had, and I've camped a lot of places. All alone on the Hanupah alluvial fan, looking over the salt flats to watch the sunset on the Amargosa range.
I thought I was looking in the right habitat, but all I found was Salvia dorii and Echinocerus engelmanii....and a ton of other cool plants, but not the monkeflower I was looking for.
Astragalus coccineus
This picture was actually taken just north of Death Valley in the White Mountains outside of the town of Bishop, California.
Astragalus laynae or funereus.
I think you have to see the pod to be sure, this is in Death Valley proper.
A selection of must have reading material for any botanizing trip to Death Valley.
The Charcoal Kilns
So bizarre to drive all the way up Wildrose canyon, in one of the most inhospitable places on earth and come across these giant, beehive looking structures. They seem completely alien in the making. Built in the late 1800's these structures were used to convert Juniper to charcoal to fire silver ore smelting operations in the valley below.
End of Part 1
I have so many pictures and reminiscing about this great trip and the rewards of now growing Mimulus rupicola is making me nostalgic so I'm going to continue this chapter tomorrow.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Summer must be coming?
Summer must be coming because the Gladiolus are starting to bloom!
Gladiolus tristis
The marsh Afrikaner
This is going to be a lame post, because I am super busy. If only it was as easy to clone myself as it is to clone plants! I would have four of me, one to tend the garden, one to fix the proverbially broken tractor, one to mow the lawn, and then I could just sit back and enjoy my daughters softball games!
Seriously stay tuned though, because I'm working on a riveting expose of the infamous Fritillaria biflora X purdyi complex that is not to be missed.
This weird bulbous geranium thing that ate the label also reminds me of summer. The pot is literally so crowded with bulbs I think it sucked the label down and devoured it.
The weather: It's been off and on, like a light switch. It's supposed to get down into the 30's for lows this week. But next week they are saying a high of 84! Try explaining that to the tomato seedlings.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Playing favorites
"Man-despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of top soil and the fact that it rains".....great quote from a seed catalog, author unknown
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Tax Day
Monday, April 16, 2012
"Obscurity and a competence. That is the life that is best worth living" Mark Twain
Well, I suppose if there are no winners there a no losers. The trivia question is now closed, no takers to the challenge, no free bulbs to be given away. So be it.
Wonderful spring break get away to Southern California, Disneyland with my daughter, sister, niece, nephew and mom and dad. Pretty great memory that will be. Drove the coast route almost all the way back with stops in Monterrey to see cannery row, Carmel, Half-moon bay, San Francisco. A nice sunny california break from the weather around here it was.
Wonderful spring break get away to Southern California, Disneyland with my daughter, sister, niece, nephew and mom and dad. Pretty great memory that will be. Drove the coast route almost all the way back with stops in Monterrey to see cannery row, Carmel, Half-moon bay, San Francisco. A nice sunny california break from the weather around here it was.
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