Description
This is the robust, horticulturally distinct, variant of Erythronium multiscapideum which is found in a small area of Serpentine cliffs and screes around Pulga Bridges in the Feather River valley of Butte County, California. (note the spelling multiscapideum, which is now corrected from the commoner, but incorrect, spelling Erythronium multiscapoideum, still used in many reference books).
It makes silvery patterned leaves below a large, white flower with a yellow glow in the throat. This yellow zone can be marked with an additional brown ring or zone or even a replacement diffuse brown ring in some plants, as the species (or forma – depending on your botanical blinkers), like many, is a little variable. AS the name perhaps imp-lies, this appears to have several scapes for each silvery leaf-pair, meaning that it carries several flowers per corm. In fact it has just one scape per corm, as do all Erythronium, but this is branched at, or just below, the soil surface, so that it looks like it has many scapes. This may seem nothing more than a botanical point of interest, but it does mean that it bears several flowers at more or less the same height as each other, in sequence, rather than having them borne along a stem.
Seed-raised from a seed collection which I made with Wayne Roderick at Pulga Bridges in the 1980s. It grows there in deep cracks in Serpentine rocks, sheltered from the very severe heat of the mid-summer days (I was there with Wayne in July collecting seed and by 7:00 in the evening it had ‘cooled’ to below 100°F). This plant, perhaps remarkably, does well in the garden, if kept in a sunny spot, well-drained, fertile and drier in summer making a superb show in late March and early April with decorative foliage and several flowers to each pair of leaves. If potted or kept in a pan, with careful management in an alpine house, it can make a superb show.
