Texas Gardening: Acres of Herbertia lahue var, caerulea, 1 by dmj1218

dmj1218 wrote:
My point was not to use a commercial picture (I really do try to avoid that on the forums--PlantFiles is another matter)--but without having to spend a great deal of time looking thru about a zillion untagged photo's under "today" (which includes about 6 months worth of pics--lol) this was the quickest that makes the point. See how this scape starts to jag over to the right? This gives the subsequent scapes (and each will also hold 2 blooms) a space to emerge. Does this make any sense? Sometimes its very hard for me to write without very unspecialized vocab.

I just think this ability of a single bulb to throw up 6-8 blooms and seed capsules is a rather fascinating Iris family (and others sometimes do this too) adaptation for survival. Also throwing these seeds off at different intervals might help against predation by a flock of birds or some such thing that might happen if they were all flung off at once.

edited to add--those are small Crinums in that picture, the Herbertia lahue were close by last year, ignore the other plants

This message was edited Apr 24, 2008 3:23 PM