Fritillaria: planting and care, varieties, growing problems and application

Fritillaria (lat.) is a beautiful plant, renamed by the people into hazel grouse. Also, in a simple way, it is often called the "royal crown." This tall and elegant plant is great for decorating a flower bed or garden. This plant causes surprise and admiration for every grower, and its cultivation does not require special skills, since hazel grouse is an unpretentious flower that grows well with other plants in the garden.

Description of the plant

Glazilla is a genus of herbaceous perennials of the Liliaceae family. More than 170 species of hazel grouse can be found in mild climates in the Northern Hemisphere, some of them can be found in the forest part of the east of the Asian region, but most of this genus grows in the west of this part of the world.

The scientific name of hazel grouse comes from the Latin word, which meant "a container for holding dice" , as in ancient times people characterized the shape of the corolla of a flower. In Rus', the name of the plant was given due to the variegated color of its most common variety in the Russian Federation - Russian hazel grouse. Its appearance resembles the coloring of the plumage of a black grouse. Today, hazel grouses are very popular as bulbous flowers.

Gribbons are perennial plants, they reproduce thanks to underground bulbs, consisting of a couple of scales. In spring, the plant develops a stem that grows out of the bulb. The leaves of the hazel grouse are narrow or oblong and scattered. The stem may crown one or more flowers collected in inflorescences. The flowers are bell-shaped.

New bulbs of hazel grouse are formed in the axils of the scales from the kidneys, and this happens every year. The mother bulb gives life to the replacement bulb that develops within it.

Flowers of hazel grouse are large and bell-shaped, while they are both separate and collected in umbellate or paniculate inflorescences. The flowers are colored in various shades, such as yellow, red, white, purple and have a variety of colors with spots. Near each leaf in the perianth is a nectary, which has the shape of a recess. The fruit of the hazel grouse is a hexagonal three-cell box, which contains many seeds.

Varieties of hazel grouse

Since the beginning of the 18th century, fritillaria, originating from Central Europe, has become known throughout the world. Today, more than 100 varieties of the royal crown are successfully grown in all corners of the globe.

Initially, hazel grouse flowers were orange and had small inflorescences, but thanks to the work of breeders, the flower has reached perfection, and modern varieties can delight any sophisticated grower with their luxury and diversity.

Among the most popular varieties:

1. William Rex. It is a tall plant with dark orange flowers and a pinkish border on the petals. The leaves are narrow and not saturated green. It blooms for 20 days.
2. Mikhailovsky variety. It is one of the most famous and unpretentious. It is resistant to temperature extremes and is popular among lovers of decorative flowers. The plant is a perennial and has bright orange inflorescences. The foliage is narrow, and the plant grows up to 40 cm.
3. Garland Star is an imperial hazel grouse. It has huge flowers of red and orange hues. The plant is large, unpretentious, grows up to 100 cm.
4. Radde is a beautiful variety that blooms for about three weeks with large green-yellow flowers. The leaves are thin and long, have a rich green tint. It is large and lush with minimal maintenance.
5. Persian (black) comes from Turkey and Iran.This plant is distinguished by large flowers of dark scarlet, sometimes reaching almost black. The green foliage gives off a blue tint. The buds form a cone, and the height is 80-90 cm. There can be up to 25 buds in one peduncle.
6. Uva Vulpis is one of the finest strains. It strikes with large maroon inflorescences, in which the inner part of the bud has a shade of olive color. The flower reaches an average height of about 65 cm and has lush long foliage. It belongs to the chess group of fritillaria and stands out for its bright color of the petals. The stems are undersized, little deciduous, reach a height of up to half a meter.
7. Meleagris does not require laborious care, grows well in any garden, but with insufficient attention it quickly runs wild and becomes smaller.
8. Fritillaria Rubra. The tall variety impresses with large scarlet inflorescences and bright emerald green leaf cover. Grows up to 70 cm. Flowering lasts up to 20 days. It requires little care and can be grown outdoors or in pots.
9. Imperial is one of the largest fritillaries. Decorated with large flowers ranging from scarlet to orange. It grows up to 100 cm. The plant blooms from May to June and is unpretentious in care. It will be a great decoration for any lawn and will surely attract the attention of everyone who loves beautiful plants.
10. Akmopetala. Luxurious variety of hazel grouse with pale green inflorescences. Flowering lasts up to 20 days, the plant is very cold-resistant and easy to care for.
11. Rascal Bach has orange buds with a pink tint. This small-bulb variety occupies smaller areas, but is not inferior to other varieties in terms of the beauty of the peduncle. Rascal Bach was obtained as a result of the hard work of breeders.
12. Directly Hazel grouse is a perennial with large hanging inflorescences of a red-orange hue. Flowering lasts about 20 days, starting in May. Grows well in shade.
13. Lutea is a perennial variety with huge yellow flowers. The leaves are bright green, the stem grows up to 1 meter. It reproduces in the same way as other described varieties. Flowering can last up to 20 days.
14. Striped Beauty. This variety is distinguished by a bright yellow color with many large scarlet or burgundy veins. Its green leaves are of medium length. Grows up to a metre. Blooms colorfully for 20 days.
15. Aurora is a perennial growing up to a meter. Her inflorescences look like an orange hat with a golden hue. Flowering lasts from 21 days to a month. The plant is unpretentious in care.

But this is not all varieties of fritillaria. There are other, not so famous, but no less beautiful species of hazel grouse in the world that look exquisite in the garden.

Boarding rules

Careful preparation of the soil and careful care of fritillaria in the autumn season, including plant control, will allow you to get abundant and fragrant flowering of hazel grouse in the spring. It is recommended to plant the bulbs at the end of August or early autumn to enable the plant to strengthen and gain strength for flowering. Fritillaria prefers soil of medium fertility with normal acidity.It must be loose and not too wet. It's also important to choose a spot that isn't too shaded to ensure vibrant bloom colors and avoid stretching the stems.

If the soil does not meet all the requirements, it can be easily corrected. Dig up a patch of soil using a shovel and add 5 buckets of organic fertilizer for every 5 meters square of soil. The bulbs should be planted at a depth of at least 25 cm, but if the soil is heavy or dense, the bulbs can be planted shallowly to a depth of 25 cm. The best solution is to lighten the soil by adding sand (about 10 liters per square meter) and peat (15 liters), and then its careful digging.

To correctly determine the depth of planting the bulb, it is worth multiplying the diameter of the planting material by three. Before planting, the plants should be carefully examined, damaged or suspicious areas removed, the bulbs soaked for 5-10 minutes in a solution of potassium permanganate, then dried and treated with activated charcoal or ordinary ash, and only then planted.

In order for plants not to block each other, planting holes should be formed with an interval of about 28-30 cm between plants. The depth of the holes depends on the type of soil: on heavy soils, the depth should be 26-28 cm, and on light soils - about 5 cm more. To ensure drainage, a layer of sand should be placed at the bottom of the hole, after which the soil is abundantly watered, and then the bulb is planted. Then it is sprinkled with pre-fertilized soil.

Expert opinionZarechny Maxim ValerievichAgronomist with 12 years of experience. Our best gardening expert.Ask a QuestionBefore you start planting plants, it is worth considering the location of flowers on the site, since fritillaria blooms in the spring and then dies off. It is recommended to plant bulbs next to other flowers to avoid empty spaces in the flower bed.

How to properly care

Caring for hazel grouse can be compared to caring for lilies.To prepare for the coming frosts, the ground with planted hazel grouse bulbs is mulched with spunbond, peat or compost so that the plants feel normal in winter. If weather forecasters predict severe frosts without snow, then it is recommended to cover the area with mulch, sawdust, or at least hay. The thickness of the coating should reach 25-30 cm. In the spring, when the snow melts and sunny days come, the shelter can be carefully removed, and in early May, you can observe the flowering of hazel grouse.

Caring for flowers is not a difficult task and includes watering, loosening the soil around the plants, removing weeds, adding fertilizer and protecting against pests and diseases. Grouse are not moisture-loving plants, so they need moderate watering, especially during the dry season. On ordinary days, they have enough natural precipitation. When the flowering of hazel grouse comes to an end, you should not immediately dig up the bulbs, as this helps them gain strength and nutrients from the soil.It is recommended to water the plot once or twice a month so that the bulbs do not remain in dry soil.

Grouse does not require a lot of fertilizer, the first top dressing is recommended at the end of April, and the second - after the flowering of the plant. To do this, you can use complex dry fertilizers, for example, one tablespoon per 1 square meter of land, after which you should water the soil abundantly. Fritillaries also respond positively to feeding with mullein, for which a tablespoon of nitrophoska and Agricola fertilizers are added to a bucket with the substance, and then they knead it all and scatter it over the area with a layer of 4-5 cm.

Ribbons, like many other flowers, do not grow in one area indefinitely. Usually, they are allowed to be cultivated in the same place for no more than 4 years, after which they need to be transplanted. The optimal interval for transplantation is once every two years. At the same time, it is important to choose a new site where crops from the bulbous family have not grown before in order to minimize the risk of damage to seedlings by diseases and pests.The preparation of a new site and the transplantation of bulbs should be carried out at the same time and in the same order as during the initial planting.

Growing problems

Even considering their unpretentiousness and ease of care, hazel grouse may face some problems, for example, the lack of flowering. However, this is not the only difficulty a grower may face.

Cold or too humid summers are not optimal conditions for growing hazel grouse. The bulbs need extra care and it is important to try to warm them up naturally before planting. If signs of decay appear on the bulbs, all affected areas should be removed immediately, treated with potassium permanganate and charcoal.

You should not grow hazel grouse in one place for a long time, as the bulbs become smaller and subsequently do not bloom. In this case, you should choose larger bulbs and transplant them in the fall.

The depth of planting plays an important role in the process of growing fritillaria. With insufficient depth, the plant reacts strongly to weather changes, freezing during frosts and undergoing rotting processes at high humidity. On the other hand, greater depth makes it difficult for seedlings to germinate.

It is undesirable to use too light soils because of their tendency to freeze, as well as clay soils that retain too much moisture. Although grouse are not targets for pests, they are threatened by onion rattlesnakes, also known as lily beetles. The larvae of these pests, located on the underside of the leaves, cause significant damage to the plant. To prevent this threat, it is recommended to remove the larvae with a soapy sponge and treat the plant with fungicides.

How to propagate a plant

Reproduction of hazel grouse can occur in three simple ways.

1. Children. In order to get more bulbs of hazel grouse, you can use a method similar to that used in the propagation of hyacinths. The fact is that hazel grouse, like hyacinth, has the ability to form daughter bulbs on the damaged surface. To achieve this, after collecting the bulbs, it is worth cutting them on the outer, thick part into one or two holes with a diameter of 1.5-2.5 cm using a sharp and sterile instrument. The wounds are dried for several days, after which the bulbs are stored in dry sand in a warm and well-ventilated area. As soon as the roots appear, they can be planted in the soil. It is important to remember that in the first year it is necessary to remove the emerging buds to prevent the bulb from flowering. When harvesting, you also need to pay attention to the daughter bulbs, which are smaller in size.
2. Dividing the bulbs. Since child onions are rarely formed and their number is small, each onion is divided in half.Each of the parts is treated with crushed coal to prevent infections, they wait until they dry out so that the wounds heal, and they are planted in the soil to a depth of 6-10 cm. Delenki are planted 20 days after being removed from the soil, since they die during long-term storage. This method of vegetative propagation is mainly used by home gardeners to increase the number of hazel grouse in their area.
3. Seeds. The method is often not used due to the long waiting period for flowering, which can take up to seven or ten years. When growing a plant on an industrial scale, this method takes place, especially when the task is to obtain a significant amount of planting material or develop new varieties. For successful sowing of hazel grouse from seeds, they should be pre-soaked and planted in December to a depth of 1.3-2.5 cm in boxes pre-filled with loosened soil and a depth of about 20 cm, without the use of various fertilizers and manure. Seedlings are placed in basements, where temperature fluctuations are within 1-2 ºC.In early spring, the seedlings are exposed to the sun and the whole season they make sure that the soil is as wet as possible. When the aerial part of the planting material dies off in summer, the bulbs formed in the ground are collected and kept in dried sand at a temperature of 20 ºC, and in early autumn they are planted in open ground to a depth of 5-9 cm, after which this place is carefully covered for wintering.

Using hazel grouse

Some types of hazel grouse contain poisonous substances related to alkaloids, but Kamchatka hazel grouse bulbs are quite suitable for food. They were eaten by the Indians of North America and Kamchadals. The latter called them "Northwestern Rice" . As for the tubers of some plant species, they are eaten instead of bread. In Chinese recipes, many types of hazel grouse are used as a healing potion.

Combining grouse with other ornamental plants can create amazing compositions in a variety of landscapes. To achieve the best effect, it is recommended to consider the following tips:

1. Low varieties of hazel grouse are great for creating alpine slides and rockeries.
2. High varieties of hazel grouse look great in rock gardens or near artificial ornamental ponds.
3. Combinations of hazel grouse with other bulbous plants will transform any small flower bed.
4. Groups of fritillaria look beautiful against lawns and are often placed in containers.
5. When creating a flower bed, you should take into account the flowering period of each plant. You can use long flowering species or form a rockery in which the plants will bloom in turn.
6. Tulips, daffodils, muscari, primroses, subulate phloxes and hyacinths also look good next to the hazel grouse.

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