Flower Bulb Season is coming!
We started the flower bulb harvest this week! For once in a blue moon, it wasn’t the hottest week of the year either, as has almost always happened in the past. The comfortable 70 degree days are going to make this a much more comfortable harvest than in past years. As a heads up this years bulb list may be a bit less packed than past years. We are working on some new raised beds and with the shade area expansion we now have the room for it so a bit more of our effort is going into that this year. In spite of that we are only one day in and I can tell you there are some choice things coming up a few of which we definitely have never offered before so warm up those typing fingers warmed up for some quick ordering when we do put the list up. I think we could have it as early as this weekend if all goes well!
Kaia, Lindsey and Anya are hard at work sorting through the repots and the for sale stock!
International folks, we will be shipping bulbs overseas as usual, with the only caveat that we cannot do CITES listed species so make sure you are prepared for that if you are thinking about putting together an order. If you can combine orders with a friend, neighbor or garden club that can cut down on the phytosanitary costs a bit. We love our international friends and do go out of our way to try to get our wonderful illahe treasures around the world as much as possible. International folks please do your research now on what you may need in addition to the USDA Phytosanitary certificate that we send, some country’s may require you to have an import permit for certain species, and the responsibility and paperwork are on the customer so make sure you have figured out what you need before you order. We will keep the list up as long as the bulbs are available and will ship into September at least or until we run out with the usual caveat that shipping could take up to 3 weeks or possibly longer with the bulbs since the bulbs are dormant but will do our best to get everything out the door promptly!
How about the wonderful Crocus orphei that will be available in limited quantities in this years list.
Or how about the wonderful Northwest native Calochortus tolmie
You see Tolmie’s name quite a bit around these parts, probably because he was one of the more educated, well traveled and industrious surgeons and Botanists to visit the Northwest Coastal areas. Dr. William Fraser Tolmie was born in Glasgow in the year 1812. He was one of 12 siblings, another of which Simon Fraser Tolmie, would go on to become premier of British Columbia in the 1880’s. William Tolmie made his way to the Northwest coast with the Hudson Bay Company in the 1930’s and spent some time botanizing out of Fort Vancouver just to the north of where Portland is now. He made many collections and the wonderful little Calochortus that is named for him was likely collected around the Fort Vancouver area, in one of the Oak savannahs or upland prairies that would have dotted the lower Columbia lands back in those days. Most of his herbarium specimens from the Hudson Bay trip were labeled the collection locations as ‘Fort Vancouver’ , ‘NW Coast’, or ‘Multnomah River’ which was used in that time for what we now call the Willamette River.
Dr. William Fraser Tolmie (1812-1886)
He was one of the first botanists to go up Mt. Tahoma or Rainier, and the wonderful little saxifrage, Micranthes tolmie was one of the discoveries from that trip. He also discovered the lovely little Allium tolmie probably in Oregons Blue or Wallowa mountains. And of course the ubiquitous shade dweller, Tolmiea menziesii. One relavance to illahe is that he seemed to not care for the chinook jargon but loved to document the native languages, as this quote from a biography reads “He was especially interested in native languages and, beginning with the Chinook jargon, “the gibberish by which we communicate with the Indians . . . a vile compound of English, French, American & the Chenooke dialect,” Tolmie, compiled native vocabularies as his travels and transfers brought him into contact with different tribes; in 1839 he sent 17 of these to John Scouler, another botanists well known in these parts, who published them the following year.
After his days with the Hudson Bay Company ended, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia.
Speaking of British Columbia, we needed a little vacation before the madness of the bulb season and after all the construction and plant sale activities of this past spring. I love British Columbia so much and more and more I love the places where you can get away from noise and humans. I will personally take my chances with nature any day over most idiots that call themselves human these days. A quick escape and a lot of driving and we reached the end of Vancouver Island. A bit of fishing off Hope Island at the Northern tip was just what I needed, loads of uninhabited islands, not a human dwelling in sight and miles of open ocean.
A Toad of a Quillback Rockfish (Sebastes maliger)
Caught on a reef in the queen charlotte strait, off an uninhabited island, miles from nowhere, with no humans around, no blasting noise, just the wind and the waves. My happy place for sure.
I may or may not put out another announcement about the bulb list, but suffice it to say it should be along shortly. With the fair weather we should make short work of it!
Cheers,
Mark and the Illahe Crew.