Re: Fwd: Hofstra show

From Botanica's glossary:
Herbaceous - In botany, the adjective describing herbs.  But among
gardeners, it is used for perennial plants which die down to the ground each
year, for example, delphiniums.

IMO, a bulb MAY be an herbaceous perennial according to the definition, but
only if they hadn't written an additional category for bulbs.  Realize too,
that some bulbs are evergreen.  Another thought comes to mind - and I'm no
expert on this, but traditional perennial plants, when they die back, go
dormant.  Many bulbs are never completely dormant, like Lilium, even though
they may seem to be.

Her broad definition of: "...herbaceous perennials as those that die back to
the ground in the winter and come up each spring.", doesn't apply to many
bulbs.  Grape Hyacinths are green all winter.  Tulips go dormant in summer.

Then you have the word bulb.  Is she including all geophytes?  corms?
(crocosmia), tubers (dahlias), and tuberous roots (daylilies)

She may have a certain technicality in her favor, but it opens up such a
huge can of worms, that it would simply be smarter to set geophytes off into
a separate category.  And even then, I have trouble with where to put
Hemerocallis. ;+)

Kitty

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna" <gossiper@sbcglobal.net>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 7:30 PM
Subject: RE: [CHAT] Fwd: Hofstra show


> Glad your show went well.....
>
> I always thought herbaceous meant non-woody. At first I thought bulbous
> plants shouldn't be considered. But they really don't break it down
farther
> than woody and herbaceous.... and they do go dormant or die off to the
root
> system, they don't have secondary growth, but somehow it just doesn't seem
> right.
>
> Can you make a bulbous section and avoid the problem?
>
> Donna
>
>
>
> >I had quite a barney with my dear friend Joan Corbisiero,> > the Handbook
defines herbaceous perennials as those that die back to the
> > ground in the winter and come up each spring.
> > who
> > had written the horticulture schedule and put narcissus, tulips,
hyacinths
> > and other bulbous plants under herbaceous perennials.  Her argument is
> > that
My argument is that the
> > word "herbaceous" refers to a different kind of plant structure from
that
> > of
> > bulbous plants.  And as someone else pointed out, they don't die down in
> > the winter, they die down in the spring after they have bloomed.  Does
> > anyone here have any input into the argument.  I know it is really
picky,
> > but I am on the evaluating panel and this could be a critical point.
> > Auralie
>
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