I took this photo of ranunculus at the 2011 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show (which is coming up again this week, March 20-24.)
Who knew ranuncs came tissue-petaled in cinnamon brown and pale peach? Last fall I tried like mad to find a selection of tubers with colors similar to these with no success at all. Local sources of tubers come in primary colors: Red, dark pink, white, yellow.
I settled for orange and cut the first flowers just yesterday from my community garden plot.
Riddle me this: Why do cut flower growers have access to an amazing selection of colors while the home grower does not?
Colors like these need to be shared.
Willow Creek Gardens offers a couple offbeat colors like ‘Merlot’ and ‘Flamenco,’ both from the California grower Carlsbad Flower Fields, which opens its flower fields March 1 thru May 12, 2013, an event that sounds similar to the flower extravaganzas more common in the Netherlands. I’ve never attended before. I likewise haven’t ordered from Willow Creek Gardens before, but they get good reviews on davesgarden.
Ranunculus are amazing cut flowers. Please tempt us with more varied and complex colors, okay?
I went to the Carlsbad Flower Fields event a few years back, which was good because they were selling ranunculus in a lot of colors you don’t normally see. I didn’t take the tour, I don’t remember why. It was probably crazy expensive. Worth a drive out there, because Carlsbad and Cardiff, etc. are really pretty, and because the roadside strawberries are incredible. Huge.
Lena, thanks for the info. Might be worth a roadtrip for strawberrries and ranuncs!
I found the merlot color tubers here in SoCal, at Rogers Garden I think. I grabbed them just because I hadn’t seen this color before. In bloom now, they’re nice but more pink than plum in color, far from the wonderful deep plum color shown in your picture.
Kris, I did check Roger’s too, since they’re usually the best bet for better varieties. I must have passed on the Merlot or they had run out. Yes, plum, not pink!