apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

This photo remaind me the Katinka Matison's work.

http://www.katinkamatson.com/prints/500/tulip_array.a.html

stay woderful :)

Heh, I strongly dislike the scent of paperwhites, but that's because strong scents give me a splitting headache. Which is too bad, because they're lovely flowers

Uh, aren't those crocuses?

Also, there are two varieties of "paperwhites" that are deliciously fruity rather than stinky: Grand Primo Citroniere and Soleil d'or http://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/spring/productview/index.php?sku=41-0104

I have seen them in local Chinese florist shops for sale during Chinese New Year's, along with potted calamondins or kumquats.

Here is another nice link with a great idea: plant them in tall galvanized containers so you wont have to stake them: http://www.michaelweishan.com/ww_paperwhites.htm

As with some of Martha Stewart's great ideas it might be neither especially easy nor cheap to procure the galvanized containers, however.

Speaking of Martha, she recommends (in a recent issue of her magazine) adding a dose alcohol to keep the paperwhites from growing too tall -- don't remember whether it was the rubbing or drinking kind. To stunt their growth in other words. Seems like a dirty trick. Very cold, but not freezing, nights and lots and lots of sunshine during the day would have the same effect.

i grew paperwhites in my bedroom this winter & UGH! to me, the smell was soooo strong.

can any of you give me a rec for bulbs you can force indoors that don't smell this intense?

Monarda,

I agree. Those must be crocuses - I think all paperwhites have a corona in the center around the stamen. I found the photo labeled 'paperwhites' in Flickr and hoped they were right since it was so pretty. So l moved it below the fold (it's still a great picture), and seized the chance to feature another beautiful picture from Flickr!

I have been told that it is the drinking alcohol - like vodka - that will keep your forced bulbs shorter.

Old House Bulbs mentioned in the story above has some great links, including one to a famous valley in the Ukraine that in spring is completed carpeted with this kind of paper-white-type narcissus growing wild - they say the fragrance is absolutely overwhelming and that people come from many distant lands to see it.

This is the kind of Narcissus that Mohammud called 'bread for the soul." (He said if you have two pennies, you should use one to buy yourself a loaf of bread and the other for some narcissus). It is found from Spain to China and Japan and everywhere in between and was probably spread in part by human agency (no doubt in part by Arab sailors and traders -- to whom we owe so much).

The funny thing is that I can remember very distinctly as a child that the usual white ones also used to be deliciously fragrant -- I remember smelling them at the NY Colosseum where many years ago. (They used to have an annual spring flower show there, like the one they now have in Philadelphia. I guess the older ones may have been more sweetly perfumed, but were less amenable to mass production than the modern stinky cultivars.

You can still get many old kinds marked "suitable for forcing" in catalogs like Old House and Brent and Becky's -- to name a few.