the glorie of all these kindes

The plant in the image above is Colchicum variegatum. This is almost certainly the same plant described in the early seventeenth century by John Parkinson in his Paradisus as "The checkered Medowe Saffron of Chio or Sio". His description of this plant contains a passage which is one of the more often quoted passages from the Paradisus: " it flowreth later for the most part then any of the other, even not until November, and is very hard to be preserved with us, in that for the most part the roote waxeth lesse and lesse every yeare, our cold Country being so contrary unto his naturall, that it will scarce shew his flower; yet when it flowreth any thing early, that it may have any confort of a warme Sunne, it is the glorie of all these kindes."

This species flowered here for the first time about seven years ago. That corm had come from an English source (although doubtless Dutch grown); it was small when received, and it took a year or two of TLC to bring it up to blooming size. The year after it bloomed it rotted during the summer. That plant had a much smaller flower than the one shown above but was otherwise similar.

I got a second chance last year with a corm imported from Janis Ruksans. This one too was small and did not bloom but it did grow well. During the summer I was careful to keep it dry. When checked for the penultimate time in mid August, it seemed fine. When checked again a week ago, I was crushed: the corm had shrivelled badly, leaving only a small bit of living tissue. That living scrap is now in the refrigerator in a zip-lock bag. It seems to be recuperating.

The flower shown above came as a corm in mid-August from JMcG, my source of choice for intriguing bulbs. This one has a flower about three inches in diameter - more if it's flattened out - and is everything I've been hoping for from this species. It is indeed "the glorie of all these kindes."

The surpassing delight of all flowers

This native plant, Passiflora incarnata, made it to England before there were permanent English settlements in the State of Maryland. In Parkinson’s Paradisus of 1629, it is called “Maracoc sive Clematis Virginiana. The Virginia Climer”..."the surpassing delight of all flowers". For decades I searched in vain for wild local populations. Then a friend tipped me off to a local population in a public park in a nearby county. Those plants were probably introduced. I collected some fruit there, and from it grew several seedlings. I nurtured these most solicitously and hovered over them for the first two years: I wasn’t taking any chances with my Maracocs. Finally they took off and started to put on good growth. Two years later I was pulling the stuff out by the yard. The ones I have now are from a later acquisition. Each year I pull most of the sprouts out and allow only a few to grow: that way it covers only a few square yards of space annually. This plant is often praised for its scent. Parkinson wrote "these flowers are of a comfortable, sweete sent, very acceptable..." Now, nearly four hundred years later, when I put the flower close to my nose, the scent is disagreeable, very disagreeable. But when the vines are blooming freely on the wall outside my open bedroom windows, the scent which drifts in is something else again – and very pleasant. One of life’s simple pleasures is to take a nap on a warm summer day when the maypop is blooming and mixing its scent with that of the nearby boxwood bushes –that indeed is a surpassing delight.

For some other views, see: http://www.jimmckenney.com/passiflora_page.htm