NARGS seedlist is out! Yipppeeeeee!

Delosperma in seed

There is something very pleasing to real plant people about seed. Delosperma even get their NAME from their seedpods (Delo=revealed; and sperma=seed) rather than for their exquisite flowers...

I've been gathering, cleaning, packaging and sending seed to the North American Rock Garden Society for nearly half a century: I doubt whether I've contributed fewer than two hundred packets in any year over the course of those many years. A few years it was well over twice that...if you want to get seed grown by me, NARGS is an excellent route...

Baklava on display in Constantinople

 There is something about the neat arrays of seeds (and seed packets) that's akin to the wonderful displays of things one sees in the bazaars and markets in cities like Constantinople (no, I shan't refer to it as Istanbul, which is simply a corruption of the former--at least until that monstrous bastard Erdogan converts the Hagia Sophia into an Orthodox Cathedral--ain't happenin' very soon, methinks: sorry James--politics is EVERYWHERE!).

Acantholimon sp. ign.

Acantholimons are glorious in bloom--but the seeds are almost showier, and they last for months instead of weeks: I should have pinched some of this for the exchange this year: the only spikethrifts offered are two I put in, and they're both stemless.

Dianthus myrtinervius ssp. caespitosus

As I was poring over my picture files for this blog, I ran into this: Lefteri Dariotis (better known as Liberto Dario on social media) published a picture of it wild in Greece just recently: but I was marveling at the strange combo of plants I grow around my little Greek pink: clockwise from the left, is Delosperma lavisiae from Lesotho, Bergeranthus jamesii from Tarkastad in the East Cape, and the giant form of Stomatium agninum (also from the East Cape), a silvery leaf of Eriogonum ovalifolium from Wyoming and the spiny leaved Globularia spinosa from Spain. 

After a fashion, this little vignette from my garden last year pretty much epitomizes me in a way--my ancestral Greek, and native America are in there, but so is Spain (I have a strong Latin and Hispanic wing as they say), and of course my work in Africa is one of the crowning glories of both my professional and personal lives.

So too does the seedlist of the North American Rock Garden Society (which is out now! At least to look at: the actual ordering will not begin until next Tuesday--but you'll need a few days to rifle through and make your list). It's a microcosm of the world. And it is incredibly elegant--especially if you have a three screen setup like I do at work: you put the seedlist on one screen, download the .pdf of the donor list on a second screen--and as you examine each plant, you can click on the name and it's linked to Google images you can store on the third screen: and it takes virtually no time to go back and forth between screens! Sweet! (As they say): almost as sweet as the baklava I showed earlier. (Nothing is sweeter than Constantinopolitan baklava).

 In a world that is globalizing on the one hand, on the other hand malignant nationalism and the desire to monetize EVERYTHING for the personal advantage of the few (usually the very few)--have made seed distribution and exchange around the world harder and harder. Thanks to a few extraordinary people (Lola and Joyce, you know who you are), NARGS has stayed ahead of the curve and has not been thwarted even by the stupidest obstacles--but helped SHAPE policy (thus far--please knock on wood). Even a God damn PLAGUE year is not daunting us! So there, COVID--may you go to hell as soon as possible, and take Erdogan, Putin, Kim Jong-un and the other tyrants and would-be tyrants with you (not naming names--they're too obvious! And I don't want to upset my most faithful follower any more)...

I would LOVE to tell you about all the treasures I'm finding on the list I've looked for for ages. But I don't want you to put in and get them before I do: maybe when they've been delivered to me, I'll let you know...I get almost as much pleasure scrolling through the donor list--there's Tony Reznicek! One of America's greatest botanists and gardeners (both!) whom I've profiled on this very blog! There's Elisabeth Zander--our amazing NARGS president--who rescued our society in this Year of the Plague by inventing a series of fantastic Symposia! Out of idle curiosity, I search the list--13 contributors from Colorado! Yay! Don't see many other states with so many donors...it's a game I play every year--and you should too!

If you don't yet belong to NARGS, there's time to do so quickly, and you can even get seed from the exchange if you do! Click HERE if you want more info...

And remember to collect lots of seed next year so I can scan and see your name and nod knowingly!