First '09/'10 success

[grannysmith]

Thanks for the welcome  I was very restrained this year and only got 60 packets,I usually get about 100. I do hold seed pots over on species that are known to be a bit "difficult".  Then if they still don't come up,I do what an elderly gardener friend always did.  I tip the contents of ungerminated pots out in the garden.  Often you will find something comes up long after you gave up on it.  I am growing species liliums, iris, fritillaria, small bulbs, campanula, helleborus, salvia, penstemon and many others. I have quite a collection of liliums now and am always on the lookout for more. LOL. I also love South American plants especially tropaeolum and bomarea and the small bulbs.  I would like to have everything! I am seriously addicted, I guess.  ::)I just love being out working on my plants.  Forget the housework!

[RickR]

I am also a species lily buff.  25 plus grown to flowering, with another 20 or so not flowering yet. 

Also have delved into Fritillaria the last few years.  Seed germinated this year so far: Ff. affinis, agrestis, biflora, biflora x purdyi, carica, crassifolia ssp. kurdica, pallidiflora, persica, pinardii, purdyi x biflora, rhodocanakis, sewerzowii, stenanthera, whittalii.

[RickR]

Checking my pots, I find that more Tulipa urmiensis have germinated and rising along with the ones sprouted last season.  As I lifted the tag to see its identity, I accidentally pulled one of the new seedlings with it.

So here it is, typical of alpines (and prairie plants), the root goes straight down without branching for a long while.

[Todd Boland]

This explains how our spring bulbs have no problems moving into lawns...they send their root down quite deep!

[Lori S.]

Hmm, I would have thought the Tulipa urumiensis seedling, even at that tender age, would have a tiny bulb formed?  (The first-season scilla/chionodoxa/puschkinia seedlings that I pull out of places they shouldn't be, seem to have tiny bulbs...) However, never having (successfully) raised tulips from seed, I have no comparison... looks like tulips take longer?

[RickR]

I think you are right with your thinking, Lori.  That one that got pulled up was only a few days old above ground, not a year old one.

[Lori S.]

Rick,
The "first-season" scilla/chionodoxa/puschkinia seedlings are ones that just germinated the same spring (otherwise, they would have been pulled out the previous spring).  For them to be "a year old", are you saying that the seeds germinated the previous summer/fall, and bulb formation started, but foliage was only sent up in spring?   Hypogeal (?), in other words?
Your tulip seedling is different though; immediate cotyledon above the ground? 
Guess I should just look up growing bulbs from seed and educate myself!  I know nothing about it (clearly)!

[RickR]

Don't ask me why I said "few days old above ground."  A mistake since it understandably put a question mark in your mind.  Tulipa urmiensis is not hypogeal germinating, as I winter sowed the seeds on 19 Feb 09 and the first seedling emerged on 22 April 2009.  That is the one I refer to as one year old now.  So yes, they grow immediate cotyledons above ground.

[Lori S.]

...I winter sowed the seeds on 19 Feb 09 and the first seedling emerged on 22 April 2009.  That is the one I refer to as one year old now.

Isn't that how it works for racehorses?      Sorry, completely off-topic! 
Thank you for the clarification.