Fritillaria: Know Them & Grow Them
by Rannveigh and Bob Wallis
It is informative to ascertain the conditions under which the various species of Fritillaria grow in the wild. Armed with this valuable information, successful cultivation is our next objective. In our wild, wet, west Wales climate we have set up a number of facilities that we are hoping will allow us to grow a wide range of species. In order to decide what to grow where, we have categorised the species into climatic groups based on what we have been able to see in the wild and what we have gleaned from books, other AGS members and lectures. Grouping in this way is never perfect as many fit into several places; for example we have observed F.lusitanica at sea level near Malaga and at 3000m in the Sierra Nevada. However it is a convenient guide:
Mediterranean
These low altitude coastal species enjoy a mild often quite moist winter, an early spring and then a long hot summer during which they are dormant before the autumn rains permit root growth again. Examples of such species are FF. forbesii, argolica and rhodocanakis.We grow such species as these in a greenhouse which is shut down in cold weather but unheated. The pots are plunged in sand which is kept moist throughout the winter and spring in addition to the normal seasonal watering of the pots. At present our plunges are 7 inch deep suspended trays built on an aluminium frame. The advantage is that we can use the space under the trays for more pots but the disadvantage is that air circulates underneath and in cold temperatures allows the plunges to freeze from the bottom up, the opposite of what happens in the wild. If we had the choice again we would use full depth (i.e. from ground level up to about 3 ft) plunge beds built of concrete blocks. Other plunge beds built like this seem to provide better growth conditions judged on just five years of experience.
American Lowlanders
For many years we attempted to grow these species ( FF.pluriflora, striata and agrestis) as above with reasonable success in mild winters but cold winters seriously damaged them, presumably because the pots froze. There was never any frost damage to the foliage but by the time the foliage started to look sick the roots were already gone and the bulbs were already beyond resuscitation. We now place these in a similar frame to that described above but there is a soil heater cable set by thermostate at 0°C to prevent freezing of the plunge and pots. Only time will tell whether this will improve our success rate. Another fact that we rarely recognise and to be honest do not do much about is that the species that grow within a few miles of the Pacific coast (FF. biflora, roderickii, liliacea and affinis var. tristulis) do not get a hot summer owing to the fogs that have made cities like San Francisco so famous. Perhaps these species should be grown a bit cooler in summer .
Mediterranean Woodland/Scrub Growers
These rather taller and easy species (FF. acmopetala, elwesii, messanensis ssp gracilis and pontica) enjoy a similar climate to that described for the coastal plants but the winters can be colder and precipitation will occasionally fall as snow. These seem equally at home in the greenhouse or outside in a frame. We know of many people who grow these outside without any problem and indeed we are trying this ourselves.
American Woodlanders
These prolific rice grain producers ( FF. recurva, eastwoodiae, brandegii and micrantha) come from woodlands that are quite moist in winter but which get quite dry as the leaf canopy develops. They live in very sheltered conditions and our observation is that they hate being blown about by the wind. Some have even suffered a sort of burning on the leaves in late spring which leads to premature dormancy and reduced bulb size. We do actually keep these shaded throughout spring, summer and autumn in a separate greenhouse from the species described above and apply a little heat on very cold nights by way of a small thermostatically controlled fan heater. Like the above species they are kept moist between about November and when the foliage goes dormant in May or June.
SE Asian species
There is a growing import trade in some outstanding species from China and we are dying to try them. The problem is knowing how to grow them. Having never seen Fritillaria growing in this part of the world, we know very little about the climate apart from what we have read. Our understanding is that the general rule is that winters are quite cold but dry, but that snow melt in the higher reaches will provide a lot of moisture. This is complicated by the monsoon that can provide considerable moisture in July and August. However the area is vast and the climate varies considerably. In particular, the effect of the monsoon is dramatically affected by rain shadows. Confused - so are we! What we do is experiment and observe how the plants are doing. F. davidii seems to be an odd one in that it comes into growth as early as September producing healthy leaf growth throughout the winter and then flowers in March. It goes dormant as soon as the temperature gets high enough. We grew this for a number of years in leafy soil in a pot placed in a shade tunnel all year round, but noticed that the leaves got damaged during our very wet winters so we take it into the shady greenhouse in winter and place it back in the tunnel immediately after flowering in order to keep it cool. The question now is: do all the other species want a wet summer and a dry winter? We grow FF. thunbergii and pallidiflora outside in a peat bed and they grow, multiply and flower very happily. The fabulous climbing, white tessellated F. tortifolius comes from the same area as F. pallidiflora so maybe this will one day become a garden plant! I can just imagine it trailing through some deciduous Berberis in one of our shrub borders.
The Snow Melters
Our final group contains the very exciting species that have evolved to grow far inland and often on mountain tops in very cold winter climates. They come into growth very late in nature when the snow melts. We have found that late May is a good time to see many of these flowering in the wild and have even seen F. latifolia in full flower in July in the Kackar Mountains of NE Turkey. In the wild they remain dormant throughout the winter and as soon as the snow melts, growth is extremely rapid with the flower expanding with the leaves. It is not easy to emulate these conditions in cultivation in our maritime climate. The winters are too wann in general with alternating cold and warm spells. Inevitably the plants start into growth at suboptimal time and vulnerable species like F.minima, karduchorum, alburyana and chlorantha often abort their buds. Some growers overcome this by placing the pots in the refrigerator from December to February. Other species are much more tolerant and flower well when grown cold. For all the above we plunge the pots in sand in an outside frame and keep it open to as much cold weather as possible without getting too much rain blown in. Having used this method for many years, we note how much better the flowering is after a cold dry winter. These are less frequent in Wales and frames get soaked by our horizontal rain so we are experimenting with a net-sided polytunnel of which more when we see what happens. In addition to the above, the species we consider to fit into this group include: FF.oranensis, crassifolia, caucasica, pinardii, armena, aurea, the southern forms of F. hermonis and a large number of others.
Grits and Soils
Everyone has their favourite recipe for compost mixtures which depend on availability, cost and their own experience. Like everyone else we have experimented widely, yet never make our minds up. We guess the problem is that we do not have time to do controlled experiments. If we change mixes we change the whole collection and judge by the display or disaster the following season whether it was a good idea or not. In general, we suspect that leaf mould is better than peat for those species that like a 'humusy' mixture. At one time we only used kitchen garden soil which was steam sterilised before use. The good old horse aided us with keeping the bed topped up. This state of affairs came to an end when the size of our collection outgrew the horse's capacity, no matter how much food we shoved down her throat, so we changed to John Innes compost which we adulterated with leaf mould and grit. We heard many tales of difficulties with grit and never had a problem with washed river sands from SE England. In Wales we found equally good sharp sand and were then offered Cornish grit which we tried. This was definitely one of our disasters. The soil compacted and the abrasive panicles seemed to injure the bulbs which duly became infected. The bigger the bulbs grew the worse the problem seemed to be, so we have now gone back to a softer grit sand.
In a nutshell that is how we have approached our Frits and although many times we are successful, we wish to improve so we experiment in a very general way. We emphasise that this is what we do. There is a huge range of other methods, climates and facilities which would probably be better than ours, so please let us know.
Identification
No doubt everyone realises the need for an international system of Latin names for plants and appreciates the efforts made by botanists to describe plant features for this purpose. However many amateurs and even skilled growers seem in awe of the terminology applied to these features. As well as growing and distributing good plants we all have a duty to ensure that they are correctly named. We shall, on occasions, need to check our plants against descriptions or use a key to identify unknown specimens. So a working knowledge of the terminology is useful. At first this may seem an awesome task but, to coin a phrase, practice makes perfect and it does become easier. The aim of the following is to present a simplified but still useful and usable account of the botanical terms applied to the genus Fritillaria.
Let us start at the bottom of the plant and work upwards. Although the bulb cannot enable us to identify a species, in some cases its shape can enable us to place it in a group: e.g. the bulbs of the American woodlanders have a central plate with lots of tiny bulblets on it; the American adobe growers have bulbs consisting of many small scales rather like a lily and F. pontica, as far as I am aware, is the only one to produce antler-like protuberances on one scale. However these are exceptions and the majority have a standard bulb consisting of two scales.
The leaf colour, shape and arrangement is frequently very characteristic. Although basically only two different colours will be observed they are, at the extremes, very marked in that the green ones are veiy bright shiny green and the glaucous ones are very markedly blue-grey. There are however a range of intermediates. leaf shapes may be:
Mediterranean
These low altitude coastal species enjoy a mild often quite moist winter, an early spring and then a long hot summer during which they are dormant before the autumn rains permit root growth again. Examples of such species are FF. forbesii, argolica and rhodocanakis.We grow such species as these in a greenhouse which is shut down in cold weather but unheated. The pots are plunged in sand which is kept moist throughout the winter and spring in addition to the normal seasonal watering of the pots. At present our plunges are 7 inch deep suspended trays built on an aluminium frame. The advantage is that we can use the space under the trays for more pots but the disadvantage is that air circulates underneath and in cold temperatures allows the plunges to freeze from the bottom up, the opposite of what happens in the wild. If we had the choice again we would use full depth (i.e. from ground level up to about 3 ft) plunge beds built of concrete blocks. Other plunge beds built like this seem to provide better growth conditions judged on just five years of experience.
American Lowlanders
For many years we attempted to grow these species ( FF.pluriflora, striata and agrestis) as above with reasonable success in mild winters but cold winters seriously damaged them, presumably because the pots froze. There was never any frost damage to the foliage but by the time the foliage started to look sick the roots were already gone and the bulbs were already beyond resuscitation. We now place these in a similar frame to that described above but there is a soil heater cable set by thermostate at 0°C to prevent freezing of the plunge and pots. Only time will tell whether this will improve our success rate. Another fact that we rarely recognise and to be honest do not do much about is that the species that grow within a few miles of the Pacific coast (FF. biflora, roderickii, liliacea and affinis var. tristulis) do not get a hot summer owing to the fogs that have made cities like San Francisco so famous. Perhaps these species should be grown a bit cooler in summer .
Mediterranean Woodland/Scrub Growers
These rather taller and easy species (FF. acmopetala, elwesii, messanensis ssp gracilis and pontica) enjoy a similar climate to that described for the coastal plants but the winters can be colder and precipitation will occasionally fall as snow. These seem equally at home in the greenhouse or outside in a frame. We know of many people who grow these outside without any problem and indeed we are trying this ourselves.
American Woodlanders
These prolific rice grain producers ( FF. recurva, eastwoodiae, brandegii and micrantha) come from woodlands that are quite moist in winter but which get quite dry as the leaf canopy develops. They live in very sheltered conditions and our observation is that they hate being blown about by the wind. Some have even suffered a sort of burning on the leaves in late spring which leads to premature dormancy and reduced bulb size. We do actually keep these shaded throughout spring, summer and autumn in a separate greenhouse from the species described above and apply a little heat on very cold nights by way of a small thermostatically controlled fan heater. Like the above species they are kept moist between about November and when the foliage goes dormant in May or June.
SE Asian species
There is a growing import trade in some outstanding species from China and we are dying to try them. The problem is knowing how to grow them. Having never seen Fritillaria growing in this part of the world, we know very little about the climate apart from what we have read. Our understanding is that the general rule is that winters are quite cold but dry, but that snow melt in the higher reaches will provide a lot of moisture. This is complicated by the monsoon that can provide considerable moisture in July and August. However the area is vast and the climate varies considerably. In particular, the effect of the monsoon is dramatically affected by rain shadows. Confused - so are we! What we do is experiment and observe how the plants are doing. F. davidii seems to be an odd one in that it comes into growth as early as September producing healthy leaf growth throughout the winter and then flowers in March. It goes dormant as soon as the temperature gets high enough. We grew this for a number of years in leafy soil in a pot placed in a shade tunnel all year round, but noticed that the leaves got damaged during our very wet winters so we take it into the shady greenhouse in winter and place it back in the tunnel immediately after flowering in order to keep it cool. The question now is: do all the other species want a wet summer and a dry winter? We grow FF. thunbergii and pallidiflora outside in a peat bed and they grow, multiply and flower very happily. The fabulous climbing, white tessellated F. tortifolius comes from the same area as F. pallidiflora so maybe this will one day become a garden plant! I can just imagine it trailing through some deciduous Berberis in one of our shrub borders.
The Snow Melters
Our final group contains the very exciting species that have evolved to grow far inland and often on mountain tops in very cold winter climates. They come into growth very late in nature when the snow melts. We have found that late May is a good time to see many of these flowering in the wild and have even seen F. latifolia in full flower in July in the Kackar Mountains of NE Turkey. In the wild they remain dormant throughout the winter and as soon as the snow melts, growth is extremely rapid with the flower expanding with the leaves. It is not easy to emulate these conditions in cultivation in our maritime climate. The winters are too wann in general with alternating cold and warm spells. Inevitably the plants start into growth at suboptimal time and vulnerable species like F.minima, karduchorum, alburyana and chlorantha often abort their buds. Some growers overcome this by placing the pots in the refrigerator from December to February. Other species are much more tolerant and flower well when grown cold. For all the above we plunge the pots in sand in an outside frame and keep it open to as much cold weather as possible without getting too much rain blown in. Having used this method for many years, we note how much better the flowering is after a cold dry winter. These are less frequent in Wales and frames get soaked by our horizontal rain so we are experimenting with a net-sided polytunnel of which more when we see what happens. In addition to the above, the species we consider to fit into this group include: FF.oranensis, crassifolia, caucasica, pinardii, armena, aurea, the southern forms of F. hermonis and a large number of others.
Grits and Soils
Everyone has their favourite recipe for compost mixtures which depend on availability, cost and their own experience. Like everyone else we have experimented widely, yet never make our minds up. We guess the problem is that we do not have time to do controlled experiments. If we change mixes we change the whole collection and judge by the display or disaster the following season whether it was a good idea or not. In general, we suspect that leaf mould is better than peat for those species that like a 'humusy' mixture. At one time we only used kitchen garden soil which was steam sterilised before use. The good old horse aided us with keeping the bed topped up. This state of affairs came to an end when the size of our collection outgrew the horse's capacity, no matter how much food we shoved down her throat, so we changed to John Innes compost which we adulterated with leaf mould and grit. We heard many tales of difficulties with grit and never had a problem with washed river sands from SE England. In Wales we found equally good sharp sand and were then offered Cornish grit which we tried. This was definitely one of our disasters. The soil compacted and the abrasive panicles seemed to injure the bulbs which duly became infected. The bigger the bulbs grew the worse the problem seemed to be, so we have now gone back to a softer grit sand.
In a nutshell that is how we have approached our Frits and although many times we are successful, we wish to improve so we experiment in a very general way. We emphasise that this is what we do. There is a huge range of other methods, climates and facilities which would probably be better than ours, so please let us know.
Identification
No doubt everyone realises the need for an international system of Latin names for plants and appreciates the efforts made by botanists to describe plant features for this purpose. However many amateurs and even skilled growers seem in awe of the terminology applied to these features. As well as growing and distributing good plants we all have a duty to ensure that they are correctly named. We shall, on occasions, need to check our plants against descriptions or use a key to identify unknown specimens. So a working knowledge of the terminology is useful. At first this may seem an awesome task but, to coin a phrase, practice makes perfect and it does become easier. The aim of the following is to present a simplified but still useful and usable account of the botanical terms applied to the genus Fritillaria.
Let us start at the bottom of the plant and work upwards. Although the bulb cannot enable us to identify a species, in some cases its shape can enable us to place it in a group: e.g. the bulbs of the American woodlanders have a central plate with lots of tiny bulblets on it; the American adobe growers have bulbs consisting of many small scales rather like a lily and F. pontica, as far as I am aware, is the only one to produce antler-like protuberances on one scale. However these are exceptions and the majority have a standard bulb consisting of two scales.
The leaf colour, shape and arrangement is frequently very characteristic. Although basically only two different colours will be observed they are, at the extremes, very marked in that the green ones are veiy bright shiny green and the glaucous ones are very markedly blue-grey. There are however a range of intermediates. leaf shapes may be:
Linear
|
Lanceolate
|
Canaliculate
|
Leaves can also be intermediate e.g. linear-lanceolate.
The arrangement of leaves on the stem may be:
The arrangement of leaves on the stem may be:
Opposite
|
Alternate
|
Verticillate
|
Whorl of 3 at the top
|
Occasionally the leaves may have a tendril-like tip which coils around surrounding vegetation.
Leaf measurements are also used to demark species but be aware that cultivated specimens may be abnormally large or small depending on growing conditions and may not fit the descriptions exactly. For this reason, relative measurements are a better guide, e.g. twice as long as broad.
Stems may be smooth or papillose (warty). This is a difficult feature as even with a hand lens it is not always obvious but thankfully it is rarely the only diagnostic feature.
So on to the most exciting part that we all wait for, the flower.
|
The tepal colour which is often thought of as being of prime importance can be an unreliable character since it is:
Overall shape is more useful.
- Subjective - what you call green someone else may call lemon;
- Difficult to describe in words;
- Can vary within a species or with the age of the flower.
Overall shape is more useful.
Saucer
|
Broad campanulate
|
Narrow campanulate
|
Conical
|
Most Fritillaria have single flowers. If more, then as with the leaves, the arrangement is significant. They may be arranged as an umbel (flower stalks all arise on top of the stem) or racemes (flowers spread out up the stern). The tepals may be marked in a number of ways, the most common marking being tessellation (chequering). A fascia is a different coloured stripe replacing the tessellation down the centre of the tepals. When considering the overall tepal shape, as well as using some of the terms above, an additional vocabulary is needed:
Oblanceolate
|
Ovate
|
Obovate
|
Oblongate
|
Spathulate
|
Cuneate
|
The tip of the tepal may have a characteristic shape as well:
Acute
|
Obtuse
|
Retuse
|
Apiculate
|
Truncate
|
At the base of each tepal is situated the nectary (usually a very obviously different coloured patch covered with the sticky nectar). The shape of the nectary is often a very important character in distinguishing species They can be linear, linear-lanceolate as illustrated for leaves (see above) or:
Circular
|
Ovate-lanceolate
|
Ovate
|
Rhomboidal
|
Elliptical
|
Some commonly confused species which are easily sorted out on nectary shape are F. pyrenaica (lanceolate) and F.lusitanica (linear). Similarly F. crassifolia (linear) and F. hermonis (ovate-lanceolate).
Fritillaria hermonis ssp. amana (yellow form)has a circular nectary
|
Fritillaria crassifolia ssp. crassifolia has a linear nectary
|
The style on top of the ovary may be fat or thin. Normally only extremes are mentioned so differences are obvious. It may be undivided or trifid (split into three branches). The proportions of the branches compared to the whole style are also sometimes of importance. As with stems, the style may be smooth or papillose.
The stamen comprises two parts, the pollen-producing anther and the filament or stalk on which the anther sits. The filament can be filiform (circular in cross-section) or expanded (flattened for some of its length).
Finally if all goes according to plan the flower will be fertilised and form seeds in large pods or capsules which themselves help to identify species. Most are smooth and rounded but some species have marked wings on the capsule.
I hope that the above account will encourage members to have a go and check pot labels against the species description.
The stamen comprises two parts, the pollen-producing anther and the filament or stalk on which the anther sits. The filament can be filiform (circular in cross-section) or expanded (flattened for some of its length).
Finally if all goes according to plan the flower will be fertilised and form seeds in large pods or capsules which themselves help to identify species. Most are smooth and rounded but some species have marked wings on the capsule.
I hope that the above account will encourage members to have a go and check pot labels against the species description.