Thursday, April 22, 2010

We collected the Shortia seed in the summer of 2008; it germinated quickly, grew slowly, and a few have now been planted out in Fern Valley

If you search this Blog for Shortia posts, you better find a comfortable chair. I just looked and; this will be the 20th post. I felt like a proud parent when Joan showed me the sites and the small plants. The bottom picture represents the exact physical location in which we found many colonies of Shortia: within feet of a small stream on the slightly elevated terraces but still within frog-splashing distance. In the top picture, where Joan is topdressing the bed with leaf compost, the Shortia are growing directly under low-hanging Rhododendrons. We saw lots of wild Shortia in this same circumstance. I have high hopes for both planting, but feel most optimistic about the streamside plants.

I'll keep close watch on the plants. I'm almost sorry to be going away tomorrow and have to miss a whole week, but maybe the "uncle effect" will happen and it'll be easier to see changes. That is the deepening coloration and the explosive growth that I'm sure will occur. Hey, we saw weedy colonies in the wild and I feel good about this site.

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