“The Bulb Book” is a
photographic guide to over 800 hardy bulbs (and attendant plants), compiled by
Martyn Rix, Roger Phillips and Brian Mathew. All bulbs are hardy enough to grow
outdoors in North-West Europe (read: in rainy Little England).
The work is intended as an overview, not an exhaustive study. The species
presentations are short, vernacular names few. The colour plates show both
collected specimens and garden plants. Some photos were taken in the wild.
There is even a dramatic photo captioned “Collecting bulbs in Kurdistan in
1965”. It turns out that the hardy bulbs come from Mediterranean-type climates,
most of them from southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Central
Asia. Apart from wild-growing bulbous plants, the book shows tulip and daffodil
cultivars.
A few plants stand out. “Cyclamen libanoticum” is a very rare cyclamen, and
only grows in the mountains east of Beirut in Lebanon. At one point, it was
believed to be extinct in the wild! The immense specialized knowledge of the
authors shines through in sentences like this one: “The nomenclature of Turkish
Chionodoxa is very confused, and most of the stocks in commerce are wrongly
named”. Thanks for pointing this out, guys. I will keep to the cyclamens in the
future, LOL.
Not sure how to rate the mother of all bulb books, but I suppose four stars
might do the trick…