Alliums - from sprout to bud

The first peek of allium snout back in January, they snuck up when I wasn't looking

Last year at Hampton Court I decided to seriously add to my stocks of alliums.  The mother bought three bulbs last time we went several years ago now, and we like them equally so there was little disagreement to buying more.  Who wouldn't like a ball of flower dancing about on a long stalk.

The allium patch early in the year, you can see the pale washed out succulent variety just appearing, I neglected to photograph it again so I can't show you the bird damage

The flower heads emerging.  You can tell these are related to onions, and you can just see my netting in the background

I have no idea what the original bulbs were, but at the show I bought Rosenbachianum, white giant and red mohican. I bunged them in holes and waited for the magic to happen.  Theoretically I don't have the right soil for alliums, but it has never held us back before so I had high hopes.  The first sign of life came in the form of leaves in mid January.  One variety had shiny leaves while the other had what I would describe as being succulant, juicy looking leave, light grey, and to be perfectly honest, rather floppy.  These succulant leaves were promptly butchered by something.  I assumed slug damage so slug peleted accordingly.  When this didn't have any affect suspicions turned to a fat pidgeon who had taken to strutting round the garden in that area.  The pesky bird had taken a fancy to pecking my leaves.  In order to prevent this I had to net the whole area which seemed to have the desired effect.  So there you go, pidgeons like alliums, who knew.  The one downside of protecting the leaves like this is the netting made the leaves a bit cramped and the went weirdly wrinkly, like somebody who had been in the bath too long.

The white giant bud just after splitting, and about to start popping out the individual little flowers

The first little flower is out! This is obviously a purple one

In early April the fat flower buds started appearing in amongst the leaves and quickly shot up on their spindly stems.  At this point I became aware that there only appeared to be two varieties distinguishable, but I bought four so was a little confused.  Anyway the buds ripened and finally started splitting a couple of weeks ago.  I love the way alliums do this.  The skin on the buds starts drying out and becomes thin and stretched like paper, before finally splitting.  Then a tuft of flowers emerges before the whole ball fills out at a later date. They don't all come out like this of course, the ones the mother had before completely emerge and then slowly flower over time.

That lovely stage when the casing is all dry and papery and starts splitting

This one came out in a lovely tuft, like a paintbrush, with the flowers all curled up in concentric spirals and already open when the shuck, shucked. Pretty!

And thats where im going to leave it, what a tease.  Il be back with pictures of the individual varieties another time.