We used to live down the street from a very nice local plant nursery. While we all frequented this establishment, purchasing various supplies and new additions to our gardens, it was also a favorite neighborhood pastime to go 'dumpster diving' to see what they might have tossed out that we might nurse back to health! One day a neighbor discovered this specimen of Ponytail Palm. She new i would find it interesting so she presented it to me one day on the street. Clearly it had lost its terminal shoot through some sort of mishap, hence it being discarded. I ended up planting it in a public garden where I was a volunteer, along side another, larger, more symmetrical specimen. It was already forming multiple new crowns and made an interesting 'bushy' accent to it larger brother. Years later, it is starting to catch up in height and is also the first specimen to start flowering!! It was a real treat to see the flowers so close at hand (these plants get very tall and the flowers are always at the top), just head-high. The day I saw it many people also stopped to get a closer look. Beaucarnea recurvata, native to Mexico (Tamaulipas, Veracruz, San Luis PotosÃ), is a member of the Agavaceae, related to Yuccas and Century Plants. A well established specimen is very drought tolerant requires little care. Their bases become very broad and swollen, giving rise to the name Bottle Palm. There are some amazing specimens in the Huntington Garden in San Marino next to Pasadena, CA. Too seldom planted in the SF Bay Area, where this one is growing. My Spanish is not good enough to understand this Mexican video, but I found the hostess so charming and sweet, I wanted to include it here!
The Warning of the Urginea [Drimia] maritima, by Tammara Hayimi Slilat Like a pale ghostly finger, a warning from down under, the first blooming wand is sent to sweep the cobwebs of complacency from our sun blinded eyes. And so, in the middle of summer's pleasure cruise, while the sweet juice of a watermelon is trickling down our chin, on our skin that has grown used to feeling free air, the flower is drawn, pointed at our hearts and we remember that indeed it has come out here last year as well. But in spite of our excellent memory it always catches us off guard.
I was prompted to post this bit in response to the emerging shoots of my own Drimia maritimas, signaling the beginning of fall with their leafless shoots. The rosette of leaves died down months ago at the end of spring and the bulbs have lay dormant in their pot till now.
Years ago, during my tenure as a Head of the local Branch of The Mediterranean Garden Society, we received word from a fellow in San Jose, CA that he "had a lot of 'giant Mediterranean onions' he'd like to get rid of and would we please come get them?" From my home in Oakland, I contacted some of our members in the South Bay and we put out the word that these 'onions' were available for the taking. I asked someone in my area who was planning to go down and check this out to bring me bad one or two of these strange things.
Turns out the 'onions' were in fact Drimia [formerly Urginea] maritima, the Mediterranean Sea Squill. The bulbs were indeed quite huge! I can't imagine that he was eating these as this plant is a well known source (in the Mediterranean) of rat poison. We never did find out where he got these bulbs, but apparently they kept multiplying in the narrow space in which he'd planted them and he'd had enough of digging out the surplus.
How these bulbs divide is actually somewhat unusual - rather than producing basal offsets, these true bulbs split dichotomously (dividing or branching into two equal pieces). Each new bulb produced this way will flower in the next year or two, so a nicely blooming clump is had somewhat quickly.
The few bulbs I ended up with from the transaction mentioned above have multiplied enough to be able to give a few away and still have a number to plant in a large pot. These previously grew on the grounds around a local school, much to the delight of the children and their curious parents. When they suddenly needed to be dug (because of some maintenance about to take place over summer session) I was delayed in replanting them. In spite of bring out of the ground, they decided to flower anyway, inspiring an impromptu photo opportunity with my family. Like some other fall blooming bulbs, such as Amaryllis belladonna, this tendency to flower while out of the ground is not unusual - just be sure the bulb is planted before the leaves appear later.
Here in California, a grower in the San Diego area now markets these bulbs for sale, so they are becoming far more common. Appropriately, they make a point of mentioning that these plants can grow without supplemental irrigation and are not bothered by deer or gophers.
Apparently the relatively slow manner in which these bulbs multiply (mentioned above) was a frustration for this commercial enterprise. But they discovered that cutting into the 'pad' at the bulb's base and planting said bulb up-side-down, caused it to produce a large number of tiny bulbils which could then be separated for propagation - interesting.
A fall flowering plant is always of interest to me - after a mediterranean climate's long, dry summer dormancy, it is exciting to have cooler, wetter weather announced in such an pleasant way.
