Not quite the tulip I was expecting, but I'll take it!

While I was awaiting brain surgery recently and contemplating the odds that I might get to meet Ceiling Cat soon, esteemed correspondent Ron Sullivan was kind enough to send me a lovely flower picture, one of the glorius calochortus she shot on one of her many fascinating and beautiful walks.  Ron told me there's a Flickr pool devoted just to calochortus, which she also informed me are native flowers also known as Mariposa tulips.

Spectacular.

I told Ron that I had planted a bunch of glorious pink tulips in my yard, that the squirrels seemed not to have removed all of them last summer, and promised that I would photograph them when they bloomed and post the photos here.

Well, I don't think that's going to happen.  Many of last year's bulbs (but not the daffodils!) were eaten, but also the promising little red, priapic spears of this years incarnation of those tulips never had a chance to develop before being romped upon by big dogs and then smothered in bark mulch by a well-meaning landlord.

However, the squirrels have definitely been busy in the garden planting as well as removing.

These "volunteer" sunflower sprouts are everywhere -- in the aforementioned mulch, in the lawn, in between plants in pots, really absolutely everywhere.  And I know exactly where they came from.

Also, I think this next item, which is growing in front of the drainspout in the front yard, came from next door.  (Click to enlarge. Consider putingt on sunglasses first.)

It isn't pink, and it's all alone, but it will do.

Comments

[jen of a2eatwrite]

I love surprises of that sort. And yes, most animals don't seem to like daffodils or marigolds. We can't get anything else to grow beyond tender, yummy shoots. ;-)

[Sugared Harpy]

Lovely!!

[Sara]

Jen, yes! Marigolds are excellent companion plants for vegetable crops like tomatoes, too, because for some reason bugs don't like them, either.

I will be putting marigolds in pots in another month or so. I love their scent as well as their colors -- and they are rather durable, which sadly is a requirement of any plants who try to grow wherever I am the head gardener.

[Ron Sullivan]

Squirrels (and voles, holes, moles, gholes, proles, boles, doles, foals, Poles, soles, well maybe not gholes, and gophers) won't eat daffodils because daffodils are poisonous to eat.

That's one reason there are little patches of daffs in the old Welsh miners' cemetery in Black Diamond Mines park, just a bit north and east of here. They were planted on graves, being the Welsh national flower and all when it isn't the leek.

Also, daffs are drought-tolerant as all get-out. OTOH it's really hard to get tulips to prosper for more than one season here.

Good thing I like calochortus. Glad you did too.

[Sara]

Ron, that's very interesting about daffodils. I had no idea. I pretty much thought all bulbs were edible. Good thing I've never taught a survival course, eh? ;)

There is a story in The Tulip by Anna Pavord about a guy in Holland just before the craze hit in earnest whose friend had sent him some rare tulip bulbs, only he didn't know what they were and had them for supper, sautéed like onions as I recall. Good thing they weren't daffodils!

A neighbor of mine in Northern California grew gorgeous bulbs every year, including tulips, droughts and all. The real thing that gets tulips in that climate is actually a lack of frost. So if you want to grow tulips in parts of California that don't have real (snow and ice) winters, you either have to be made of money and just plant them like annuals every year or do as my neighbor did and lift and freeze them after bloom every year -- too much work for me!

Here, we have the winters, but we also have the gardening and munching critters galore, so people and institutions usually plant new ones every fall or they bury the tastiest bulbs in wire baskets that are difficult for the rodents to penetrate. Thing is, most tulips, especially the fancier ones, won't last indefinitely here, even if they aren't munched. Originating in the arid mountains of Asia Minor, they crave both deeply cold winters and a certain amount of drought, and our climate is just too wet here. Mold and rot get what the squirrels, etc., don't. Also, many of the fancier varieties just don't live very long, period.

They are lovely while they last, though. Esteemed correspondent Bipolar Lawyer Cook has recently aptly compared them to lollipops. I think this explains their irresistibility.

And I guess that makes the calochortus a wild lollipop. What a concept.