Re: Tigridia

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I have grown the common Tigridias that is distributed through many bulb companies in my garden in St. Louis. It needed to be planted early or it would not get around to blooming before fall. Since it is not hardy in zone 5 or 6 I would have to dig it each fall. It always increased dramatically. It is a native of the mountains in Mexico so it might tolerate some freezing maybe zone 7 or 8, but it probably does not like its summers to be scorchers either. Lately I have seen bulbs offered by color but usually they are mixed colors. The plethora of colors spoils the effect in the garden in my opinion and single color clumps would be nicer. 

Elwood Moleseed was a member of SIGNA and did his doctoral dissertation on Tigridia. There are somewhere around 20-30 species and if one could find starts they all would make fascinating garden plants. Unfortunately Elwood died right after he finished his dissertation. Roy Davidson named an Iris in his memory. I often thought it would be nice to serialize the dissertation in SIGNA giving one or two species each issue, but sadly I am not sure seed would be easy to come by.