Calochortus tiburonensis

 “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

                                                                                    Charles Darwin

Calochortus tiburonensis

One of the rarest in the genus, or at least the most locally restricted, the Tiburon Mariposa lily grows on a shrinking peninsula of habitat in one of America's, if not the worlds most expensive real estate markets. As a kid it always meant we were getting close to my Nanny and Deda's house, When we saw the Golden Gate bridge, my Ukranian grandparents lived just a bit south of San Franciso which in the 1980's was still the relatively small beach town of Pacifica. I remember seeing Angel island and the Tiburon peninsula so many times ringed in fog banks as we drove down to visit them. My dad would tell me stories of growing up on the Avenues of San Francisco in an immigrant community on the edge of little Italy and  how he and is friends would get a loaf of sourdough bread and spend all day playing the lost boys in golden gate park which was pretty much a giant natural area back then. 

Don't get me started on bible stories, as I was fed plenty back in the day, I've read the bible backwards and forwards at least 5 times from youngster to adult and I can run most categories on the subject in jeopardy. The story of Noah's ark is ubiquitous enough to most people to warrant bringing up here. As we sit here on a planet hurling towards inevitable climate change induced doom, rare plants come up so often in discussion. I've been on the side of professional conservation manager, restoring Willamette valley wet prairie, riparian and wetland habitats and I've seen how some conservation nazi's think seeds of rare and endangered should be locked away as if the modern day version of Noah's ark piloted by billionaire capitalists like Bezo's and Musk are at some point going to depart this planet for Mars with little packets of wildlfower seeds, and all the animals two by two. 

I'll never understand the mentality of the lock up the rare things crowd, the conifer folks figured this out a long time ago, as soon as they discover a rarity like the most recent examples of the Wollemi pine or Xanthocyparis vietnamensis, they get some propagative material to the nursery folks to get it bulked up in cultivation and thus take any pressure off the wild populations. Put some seed in the mars bank, and then give some to the growers to appreciate and enjoy these plants while this  planet still exists.

If you are every lucky enough to get seeds of this rarity, it's easy enough to cultivate. The shared knowledge that might let a plant like this live on in cultivation long after the last remnant of it's habitat is sold for a condo development or the fog banks that so long shrouded it's coastal domain disappear in the coming global climate catastrophe, or the introduced pampas grass finally smothers it's preferred serpentine dwarf bunch grass community is important.  

Cultivation:

I grow it in a mix of 1 part pumice (slow 6 grade), 1 part composted cow manure, 1 part sandy loam topsoil. This plant was cultivated from seed which came from a cultivated source, germinated in the same mix, in a 4" pot, sown on the surface and covered with a 1/4" layer of crushed quartzite, after 2 years it was moved to a gauge 505 dura pot, some people call it a square gallon but it's smaller. in an unheated open ended greenhouse, with natural ventilation. It's seen temperatures down to a low of 19 degrees and as high as 130 (during the heat wave of last year, where it was 115 in the shade and much hotter in the greenhouse). It's been kept relatively dry through the winter and watered very sparingly through the growth period. It almost seems to relish the cool mornings and warm afternoons as if it was growing in the fog banks back home. It gets a dilute cal-mag based fertilizer with micro-nutrients once every two weeks while in growth. Why the Darwin quote? Well to be perfectly honest, I treated this like any other Calochortus I grow without an in depth knowledge of it's rarity , nothing like ignorance to build confidence right?

Blog, Nursery, Website and Catalog Update:

This is pretty much it for the blog as we know it folks. I may squeak a post or two in before this becomes just another archive to live out there in the Metaverse until someone decides Blogspot is no longer relevant and it dissapears. Soak up all the knowledge you can from the last 10 years of me posting my social, and political rants, with an occasional nugget of horticultural advice. The last post here will be a link to the new site and blog.

The new website format has it's own blog, but I wasn't able to migrate this one over to it. So I'm going to start fresh, I may even try to grow up a little bit and act like a businessman, since I am trying to make a legit living as a horticulturalist these days. So maybe no more posts of inflammatory nature, or maybe not, it's hard to say. If people buy plants and I can still have my opinions and values, that's all the better. 

As for the catalog, I'm looking towards this model: 

Spring catalog sales of Alpine, rock garden and zeric plants shipped in pots throughout the US. Unfortunately, Its a bit challenging to ship plants in soil outside the US, so I'm holding back on that. 

Summer dormant bulb catalog release as per usual, shipped worldwide.  I'm a bit concerned about shipping alpines in the heat of the summer, but we may trial that on a limited basis of stuff that can survive and the big live plant list will be the spring and fall. 

Fall/winter catalog sales  Alpine, rock garden and zeric plants, and some of the summer growing bulbs I have been increasingly growing. 

I'll have a couple of open garden sales onsite to show off the garden as well for folks in the Oregon territories. 

I'll sign off for now, and with any luck and a bit of productivity the new website will be up and running shortly. 

Sunshine and 70's this week! Rain returning in time for the weekend. 

Mark