Fall Surprise

It's good to plant fall - blooming bulbs because most of the time I forget to expect them, so I get a welcome surprise in September. 

 And they go with everything.

Here's a vignette from my front garden:

The pink flower is Colchicum cilicicum, planted with Euphorbia myrsinites (bluish donkey-tail looking plant), chartreuse Aquilegia 'Woodside', and no-name Columbine. You can see a bit of blue-flowered Ceratostigma plumbaginoides in the background and Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' to the right (little yellow flowers).  Also, I hate to admit, there is a huge happy plantain in there pretending to be a hosta. (Right rear)

Colchicum

Colchicums are corms, and they will bloom even if you don't get them in the ground soon enough.  Which of course, is not recommended practice, but, ahem, it does happen.  They are great for low-maintenance gardeners, because they don't actually appreciate a lot of water when they are dormant in the summer. 

They'll put up fat leaves in the spring,

 then die down until the leafless September show. 

They come in white,

 light and dark pink, lavender, and a cultivar called 'Waterlily' 

which has a lot of petals but fails to impress in my garden, anyway.  See how in this (not from my garden) photo the flowers flop?  That's characteristic of the bloom.  Sadly, there always seems to be a rainstorm about the time my white ones bloom and they get muddy.

Plant yourself a surprise this fall.  You can find Colchicum corms at better nurseries and online.

Garden Oddities, or Alien Fruit

Weird.  Jack-in-the-Pulpits are the show-offs of the woodland.  Their flowers are just slightly naughty looking, which no doubt accounts for their prudish name.  "Um, yes, and that's a preacher!"

Arisaema triphyllum: native Jack-in-the-Pulpit

However, their best feature comes after they've been pollinated - bright red aggregate fruit!

Aggregate fruit of Arisaema

The stalks are lying over because the plants are entering dormancy - they're still quite alive and will make their appearance in the spring.  I'm going to propagate these plants from seed as well as from their tubers.  It's an interesting process when you have these fleshy fruits bearing seeds within. They have to be soaked for a couple of days so the soft part can be rinsed away, and then they are given a cold treatment before sowing.  If all goes well, I'll extra plants for my inventory.  

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