I wanted to talk about where in the world do flower bulbs come from. I'm always fascinated that there's really only a few regions in the world that all of the flower bulbs that you see in your garden actually originated from. We're in North America right here and the bulbs that I sell were on the Pacific West Coast. I'm in Kalama, Washington, just north of Portland, Oregon, and I sell a few native bulbs that are from our area like the Triteleias which are little purple blue flowers and Camassia, also called Camas root. Camas, Washington was named after that plant, and the natives used to eat the little corms just like you eat hazelnuts or beer nuts. There are lots of other plants that come from America too, Liatris or Gay-feather is from the Midwest, and then we go down to Mexico and I have Canna Lilies, Tigridias, Mexican Feather Grass, pretty much any plant. Most bulbs are from mountainous regions. So, everywhere all the way from the Cascades down through Mexico, you'll find most bulbs. There's not a lot that originate from the East Coast. There are some but we have a lot of Mountain Lilies and Brodiaea, which is also called Triteleia, the Camassia, we have Bear Grass, we have all types of plants that you can find all around the world now. Next stop, South America. Ismene or Peruvian Daffodil is a plant we sell in the summertime that's from Peru where the Incas developed it, so I like to think here we are 10,000 years later or 20,000 years later still enjoying a plant that their civilization created for us. They're beautiful, beautiful plants. My favorite location for where plants grow, especially bulbs is South Africa. There's a small area on the cape that produces 20% of all the bulbs that ever grown in the whole world. We enjoy Freesia, Gladiolus, Calla Lilies, Watsonias, everything, Eucomis from South Africa, and we don't even realize an area the size of the Portland metropolitan area produced all those plants. Next, watch the second part on our discussion of the native areas for flower bulbs.
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