Washington State native seed source

Welcome, fringe!  Glad to see you participating here!
You certainly have some seeds for terrific plants at your site.  Synthyris schizantha is wonderful!

Happy to see you here, Fringe!

Your seed collection is formidable. Do you do all the collecting yourself?

Very nice, I have already placed an order ;D

Good to see another source for wild seed :) The Synthyris looks great, hope you'll be sharing more wild shots :)

Wow! :o what a fantastic selection! I am so tempted to place an order, but I'm not sure on the hardiness
of most of the plants for Vermont! I'll need to do a bit of research first or make a wish list and order a few things from the seed-ex.  ;)

Hello Fringe, welcome to NARGS Forum.  Synthyris schizantha is most desirable.  My first up-and-close look at the genus Synthyris was in the garden of Roy Davidson in Bellevue Washington.  I was fortunate to live just a mile or so from Roy's house when I lived in Bellevue Washington 1982-86.  He had every species of Synthyris growing, tucked into humus pockets in a fairly steep shaded rockery; I wondered why these were so seldom grown.  I don't currently grow any, but now tempted by your very fine listing of Washington native plants.

Amy, I think most plants on the list should be perfectly hardy in Vermont, so far as cold, the challenge might be to provide the right garden habitat for them to prosper, I see a number of plants on the list which I can and do grow here on the Massachusetts - New Hampshire line. You are located about 100 miles north of me (in a strict latitude sense), so our general climate should be somewhat similar.

McDonough wrote:

Amy, I think most plants on the list should be perfectly hardy in Vermont, so far as cold, the challenge might be to provide the right garden habitat for them to prosper, I see a number of plants on the list which I can and do grow here on the Massachusetts - New Hampshire line. You are located about 100 miles north of me (in a strict latitude sense), so our general climate should be somewhat similar.

I was about to suggest something similar... I have very few reservations about the hardiness of alpines, given their adaptation to some extremely harsh environments! Whether the garden environment one creates provides the right conditions for them is the question, indeed. 

Thanks for the warm welcome.
Yes, I did all collections on my own.  I went out every other weekend from April to September to find large enough populations to collect from then return to make small collections (usually no more than 1%) then cleaning the seed when necessary.  Lots of miles traveled and work-- I don't know how the "real" collectors manage.
I did not attempt to give Zone or Hardiness ratings.  I would think that all of our natives can easily take 0F/-20C at least.  My garden in Seattle doesn't get much lower that 20F/-10C so I can't test this myself.  And most of these species are so rarely grown that no else knows either.
I will try to accept the invitation to post another species photo or two soon.

fringe wrote:

Thanks for the warm welcome.
Yes, I did all collections on my own.  I went out every other weekend from April to September to find large enough populations to collect from then return to make small collections (usually no more than 1%) then cleaning the seed when necessary.  Lots of miles traveled and work-- . . . .

Although hard work, I believe it is pretty exciting too! But you surely have to do some research when the plants are in bloom to know where to look for seeds!

I do know a little about our native flora (I hope so as I have given 5 or 6 talks on the subject)-- so that did help a lot knowing where to begin to look.  And committing to collect seed committed me to get out there and re-visit familiar old places and find new ones.  Here's something new that I saw for the first time this year:  Erythronium quinaultense.  It is a tetraploid derived from a natural E. revolutum x E. montanum cross and grows on the west side of the Olympics near Lake Quinault.  But I did not collect seed since it's rarity status is still under review.  It probably is able to increase by offsets too which would be important to gardeners and propagators and land managers alike..... but even this basic fact is still unknown to the literature.  (The petals do recurve more but the rain was pulling tepals down.)

A real beauty! If you ever collect seed I assume you'll have great demand for them ;)

Polyploidy following bigeneric crosses is not an uncommon way for nature to create new species.

OK, my order has been placed! Very exciting and interesting selection!