Spring 2008
Spring 2008 in Dunedin has been amazing in many ways. The weather over winter was very mild, with almost no frosts and good rain falls. So the plants in my alpine garden have done really well, as they have had plenty of soil moisture. Alpines are flowering well too some things flowering for the first time or the first time in the last couple of years. After over 10 years I have two Aciphylla aurea flowering one male and one female. The male had flowered for the first time last year and the female only this year.
Aciphylla aurea female flower 11 years from seed
Despite the wet winter I had managed to keep several Hasstia and Raoulia cushions going in my makeshift alpine house. One Raoulia mammillaris survived outside all winter in a polystyrine trough. It just shows you that if something is growing well they can survive anything.
Ranunculus serrocphyllus grown in a polystyrine "trough"The weather has been all over the place this spring though with 20-30 degree days little rainfall and one antartctic blast that left snow lieing 2 days in a row in November which hasnt happned for 30 years. Luckily there were no frosts in my garden which could have done seroius damage to young tender growth.
The heat was rather hard on some Celmisia flowers with them shriviling away on the hottest days.
Celmisia angustifolia and Aciphylla devisa
One rather nice discovery I made is a nice brown leaved Geum. It was grown from seed collected on Mt Altimarloch in Marlborough. It is probably very closly or just a form of geum cockayanii. (formorly known as parviflora) So Im tentativly calling it Geum sp. aff cockayanii. Whatever its taxonomy it is a very attractive plant for the garden with nice compact growth large flowers and attractive brown leaves that can turn orange with age. This gives it a kind of autumnal apparence. It grows on rock outcrops at about 1500m with Leontopodium neglecta and Raoulia broyides nearby. I will collect seed off the plants I have in cultivation this year. Not sure how widespread it is in Marlborough.
From Left: Geum sp. aff. cockayninum and Geum cockaniunum a self sown seedling in my garden