Bulbs – Page 30 – Ellis Hollow

Flower bulb activity ‘webinar’

Thursday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I’ll be part of a ‘webinar’ (online web seminar) previewing a new website (The Bulb Project) for educators to help them use flower bulbs to teach science and other subjects. My friend and colleague Marcia Eames-Sheavly (who heads-up the Garden Based Learning program at Cornell) and Elly Cramer (technical wizard with the National Science Digital Library project at Cornell) are the others on the presenter team.

The webinar is basically an online PowerPoint presentation where we’ll voice over the slides. But it also involves interactive features during the presentation, including online chat during the presentation. It’s sponsored as part of an on-going serices by the National Science Teachers Association.

We won’t be detailing any cutting-edge bulb growing techniques. The focus is how to use bulbs in the classroom or informal learning settings, like after-school programs, 4-H groups, homeschooling, etc.

If you or someone you know works with children or youth, this should be right up your alley. Of if you just want to look at some pretty bulb pictures on a cold night, or experience a webinar, tune in. It’s free. And you can find more information at the NSTA webinar website.

Janis Ruksansâ€™ bulb catalog

Scilla armena, Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.

Last fall, I wrote about the eye-popping presentation Latvian bulb expert Janis Ruksans gave to our local Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society. I haven’t yet read his Timber Press book, Buried Treasures. But it’s the next up on the nightstand.

Today, I received Ruksans bulb catalog via email, and am posting it here online in hopes that some of you will find some buried treasures of your own within.

Warning:

This is not a glossy catalog full of great pictures. It’s all text.
These bulbs aren’t cheap. The prices are in Euros. So add 50 percent (and rising).
You need to do some homework. I know a lot of the bulbs Janis offers are not hardy here in Zone 5. Your mileage may vary.

I do know you’ll find bulbs in this catalog that you won’t find anywhere else.

Our rock garden society chapter is probably going to put in a group order to reduce shipping, handling, etc. Look for details on our new blog.

Anemone ranunculoides mutations gathered from around Chernobyl. Scary. Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.

Bulb labyrinth

This afternoon, I helped Cornell bulb expert Bill Miller and his class prepare a bulb labyrinth for planting at the Bluegrass Lane Research Center. Center manager Ron White ran a sod stripper over the pattern Bill laid out yesterday. And today the students excavated the trench where the bulbs — daffodils, tulips and muscari — will be planted next week.

Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has a single convoluted path to the center. Go ahead. Trace it with your finger following the grass path that will be defined by the bulb planting. (Much easier with the larger image.) It’s an ancient, contemplative tradition. Read much more about it at the Labyrinthos website.

Update [11/13/2007]: Nice coverage of the project in the Cornell Chronicle: Student-created labyrinth plants the way for a perennial path to peace.

Janis Ruksans’ bulbs

Sunday before last, our Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society was treated to a spellbinding presentation by Latvian Bulb expert Janis Ruksans.

Now I’ve had my eyes glazed over by what we called back in the days of carousel slide projectors the ‘two-tray presentation’ — photo after photo ad nauseum until it’s all just a blur. But the three PowerPoints Janis presented will stay with me for a long time.

His first presentation was an overview of the incredible bulbs he’s gathered in his plant explorations throughout the former Soviet Union. It included this startling image of Anemone ranunculoides mutations gathered from around Chernobyl. Scary.

Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.

This Scilla armena caught my eye among the scores of other images of unusual bulbs he showed.

Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.

The first presentation was followed by hour-long presentations on fritillarias and corydalis. They were all amazing.

I wish I could point you to Janis’s website for more information. But he doesn’t have one. He puts out a print catalog in January. Propagates plants until August. Then fills orders. If you want his catalog, you have to send $5 cash (with the declining dollar, maybe he’ll raise that this year) to: Janis Ruksans, Bulb Nursery, P.K. 441, LV-1010 Riga, Latvia. I’m trying to talk him into letting me post his catalog online. But it looks like he gets all the business his family needs the old-fashioned way.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but friends I trust tell me his book published this year by Timber Press, Buried Treasures: Finding and Growing the World’s Choicest Bulbs, is a great read. It will be on top of my reading pile before the snow flies.

Bee on Colchicum autumnale â€˜Alboplenumâ€™

Click images for larger view.

Actually, I wasn’t actually sure what this flower was. But I googled for awhile and found a post about Colchicum autumnale â€˜Alboplenumâ€™ over at Kathy’s Cold Climate Gardening. Turns out that according to my records (that tattered file folder with random packing slips shoved into it), I bought half a dozen colchicums in 2003. But this is the only one that’s still around. Â (If you think it’s something else, let me know.)

Couldn’t decide which one I liked best during picture editing, so here’s more.

Sharpening did weird things to this one. As a photo, I don’t like it. As a special effect, kind of interesting.