Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Hobden
Dry shade is the accepted position for them. However, because we had a large
tree cut down the ones I planted under it are now in full sun in our open
front south facing garden and they haven't read the book. They get baked
every summer and are gradually taking over the garden even seeding in the
grass, and the block paving, there must be hundreds of little seedlings out
there at the moment everywhere you look. I will have to do something
eventually.
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I suspect what it means (like quite a few plants we grow in shade in the garden) that they do well in shade, but like sun when they get it. I have a gravel covered terrace at the south of the house, and have planted both C hederifolium and C coum. The coum have been in full flower for several weeks, and are absolutely covered with blossom, a solid pink mass, over 50 flowers per corm, and these are small corms which only went in last spring. And there are seedlings from the three older ones all over the place, including little patches with a dozen or more seedlings as thick as mustard-and-cress.
I haven't seen C coum in the wild, but I've C hederifolium at the top of limestone mountains in the Aegean, forcing its way through limestone chippings about 3 inches across, or peeking out of cracks in solid limestone slabs. These treeless summits are about as far away as you can imagine from our traditional C hederifolium habitat of dry shade.
I presume the key thing is that they don't like their corm to be sitting in wet soil over the winter.
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