Janis Ruksans - Versatile Alliums

Rick suggested folks here might be interested in the write up for our chapter
newsletter for Janis Ruksan's talk last month. Here's the talk I wrote up. (He
gave us two talks - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.) I'd highly
recommend his book "Buried Treasures" It is available at a discount to NARGS
members but I'm sure you can also find it in the usual places.

Anyway - here's the writeup.

Versatile Alliums in the Garden
By Janis Ruksans Oct 27, 2007

With a joyful and enthusiastic voice, Janis gave the membership an amazing tour through a versatile and often gloriously garden worthy genus, the alliums. There are 750 species in North American and Eurasia. Only one is native to S. Africa and just a few more to N. Africa. We grow them as food, medicine, ornamental additions to gardens and containers and even for both fresh and dry arrangements. The variation of size, color, and growing situation is vast, from woodland to desert and from 5cm to 2m tall.

We saw a total of 74 slides of alliums that Dr. Ruksans has found in locations primarily in his native Latvia and the former Soviet Union. An exuberant collector, he included some that only a collector would bother to share. Allium schoenoprasum is a common Latvian native, A. oreophilum “Kusavli Curl’ is an intriguing plant with curvaceous leaves that whose flowers are horizontal to the plant. A. scabriscapum is one of the few yellow Central Asian alliums. Blooming in the second half of summer, A. caeruleum is one of the brightest blue.

Dr. Ruksans many pictures highlighted the alliums in their native environment, which helped us understand the types of conditions the various species might enjoy in our own gardens. A. nevskianum and A. alexejanum were seen in a very rocky slope. A. karataviense another that thrives in 15-20cm deep stone with peat beneath he said is an excellent grower collected from different places. It’s a huge plant with wide leaves. Subspecies henrikii was selected for its longer stem. We saw pictures of this species growing in a row, in a natural site. Dr. Ruksans explained that he discovered that the line was a crack in an underlying stone.

A. kaufmannii enjoys a wet spring and grows in sticky clay. A. libani is from Syria and was highlighted to us as a favorite for its leaf shape, leaves slightly curling along their edges, growing along the ground to away from the inflorescence at the center. It was this mid-way point through his talk the Dr. Ruksans exclaimed with joy that he wants to grow them all, to know how to tell them apart and to figure out which is better.

Allium barsczewskii ‘Aman-Kutan’ & “Snowcap” have bulbs attached to rhizomes. This species has a huge variation in color. A. caesium “Pskem’s Beauty’’ & ‘Aravan’ were two examples of the color variation for this species, which is typically blue with the former selection showing it is also found in white. Allium winklerianum, one of our speaker’s longtime favorites for the garden (50cm tall with large, narrowly cup-shaped purplish violet flowers) was shown along with A. cupuliferum. A. reglii makes several layers of flowers and Dr. Ruksans found one that had 4 flowers on one stem. This is a desert plant, hard to grow in his garden but suitable for a greenhouse situation.

A. sphaerocephalon ‘Peter’ was cited as an allium that is very special to the speaker. Allium tripedale is a tall plant that “is amazingly nice.” Dr. Ruksans shared a humorous tidbit about the other allium in the same slide as tripedale. Allium obliqum, with lovely mid-summer bloom “would be an excellent cut flower”, a view shared by a bulb company interested in it for propagation to sell to the cut flower business. Upon its bloom, they abandoned their plans. The smell is apparently quite unpleasant. Dr. Ruksans did say that in the open garden, this is not such an issue.

We saw slides of alliums “only collectors love,” collectors who must have them all. “It doesn’t matter if nothing is special.” This he said as an obvious admission of an avid collector.

We saw many alliums in the wild and then moved to some in the speaker’s own gardens. A. cernum is an American plant; its foliage dies off as the flower starts. The advice shared was to grow it amongst large leaved perennials. He has fields of alliums and grows them for his nursery business. For those interested, he does ship bulbs and his address is provided at the end of this article.

The group asked Dr. Ruksans about his climate in Latvia. He found it hard to describe since the minimum temperature has varied greatly year to year. He said one winter it got to a minimum of -18degC and another they had two full weeks of -35degC. They have snow some years and none others. Summers are sometimes dry and others wet. Latvia’s highest mountain is 300m above sea level and so is quite flat with slightly wavy low hills. He described the variation in garden soils as well. His first garden had coarse sandy soil. The current property had heavy clay. He has amended this by adding literally tons of sand and peat every year.


This message was edited Nov 18, 2007 9:06 AM

Did he show any Allium wallichii? I am wondering about the variability there. It's supposed to have very dark flowers.

Sadly no. Its not in his book either.