An Indian summer

Press, 24 April 1980, Page 10

An Indian summer

GARDENER’S ? DIARY

■-■‘r Bi

Derrick Rooney

r,, he abnormally wet .iher of late summer

an.i early autumn seems to have given way, for the meantime, to a sunny Indian summer, with the result that many autumn flowers that are usually burnt off or frosted off by mid-April are continuing their display well beyond the due date this year. And the lack of bleaching sunlight has resulted in a particularly vivid display of colour, particularly by chrysanthemums; the ones that are flowering, that is. In our garden several chrysanthemums have simply failed to set flower buds, and have gone on growing instead. Where we should have neat, thigh-high domes of bright yellow we have a forest of waving stems, nearing two metres high. It is not a case of overfeeding, because the soil in which they are growing is not very rich, and they have strong competition from a group of tall poplars.

The answer, I think, can be found back in January, when we had the first of the storms that made the last summer one of the most miserable for many years. For many weeks in summer we suffered frequent cold, wet southerlies, interspersed with patches when day temperatures soared to great heights, but night temperatures dropped to just

above, and several times to just below, freezing. Some plants from cooler climates thought this weather was just the berries, and have done exceptionally well. Primulas have romped away; P. japonica has grown the size of cabbages in my garden this year, and flowered repeatedly until about Easter.

But those plants that need a good ripening in

summer and autumn to set their flower buds have suffered badly. The nonflowering chrysanthemums are the first manifestation of trouble.

More can be expected next spring, when, I fear, the fruit trees will flower poorly and I will find that we have lost many bulbs through rotting when they should be ripening. The present mild, sunny spell may straighten out the fruit trees, if it continues for a while, because we are still not getting frost and day temperatures are still high enough to have some ripening power. But it is too late to help the bulbs, which have now completed their annual

cycle and are beginning to make root growth in preparation for the spring. Oddly enough, it seems only to be the springflowering bulbs that are suffering. The autumn bulbs are mostly flowering unusually well, perhaps in response to the hot weather we had in spring and early summer. The colchicums are over now, but various crocuses are in full swing, with more to come in May and June.

Iris chamaeiris, which usually repeats in autumn, has not done so this year (and some of my bearded irises have just rotted away and gone forever), but one member of the iris family is flowering nicely in our Indian summer. This is Gladiolus carmineus, a little South African species whose height is measured in inches, rather than feet. This little plant has smallish but very graceful flowers, mouth-wateringly pink, in typically hooded and flaring gladiolus’ shape, on short leafless stems. It does not flower every year, and in the years when it does flower it is so late, in my garden, that frosts usually turn it to mush. >

Sometimes, in a hard winter, the older corms are killed outright, leaving only a few “spawp,” tiny cornlets that take a year or two to reach flowering size.

It is not an easy bulb

to obtain, and I see that the nursery from which 1 obtained my bulbs, some years ago, no longer lists it. My own stocks are down to one small clump which is being zealously guarded, because this year the other two clumps failed to reappear. It is worth keeping, for a variety of reasons. It is a gladiolus that flowers in late autumn, and that is a singular distinction in its genus. It is very attractive.

It is small enough to put in a rock garden, but not so small that it would be lost in an ordinary sunny bofder. And last, but not least, it has an interesting pattern of behaviour.

The flowers appear out of bare ground on a short, leafless stem. After they fade, the stem slowly shrivels away while the single leaf spears through the ground. Throughout winter this remains, a typical gladiolus leaf, but in early s-pring it , begins to lengthen, and soon becomes topheavy, at which stage it flops over and begins to grow along the ground. By mid-summer, when it it is ready to die down, the leaf will have snaked around and through its neighbours and may be as long as a man’s leg. Gladiolus carmineus is the only bulb, or rather corm, that I can count without lifting. One bulb, one leaf is the rule with this species. The leaf is a guide to flowering too, because non-flowering corms begin to make vegetative growth early in autumn, and have their leaves up by the beginning of April, and a thicket of leaves in the gladiolus patch at that time means there will be no flowers, or very few.

Another South African bulb closely related to gladiolus that flowers about this time, if its owner is lucky, is Homoglossum priori; I grow its variety, “Salteri.” This has a reputation for tenderness and I grew it for years in a pot, in which the clump multiplied quite rapidly, providing a fistful for friends at every annual repotting time.

It should flower in early May, with foot-tall spikes of. glowing reddish-pink that look like a cross between a gladiolus and an ixia. Botanically it is somewhere between the two.