Herbarium Magicum - Chistmas 2018

Time ago, I decided to focus my love for flowers (also) to the painting and writing of some tradizional spells concerning some flowers.
The idea was to write down a real herbarium with dozen of paintings. Sadly time is short and my will changes; my mum asked me to gift these paintings for Christmas. So I prepared them and I will gift them all. Before that, I photographed all and here I post them to remember my love for flowers and for sharing the images.
I hope you will like (drawings and texts all done by me)

NARCISSUS POETICUS

CALLUNA VULGARIS

IRIS PALLIDA

PASSIFLORA INCARNATA

HYACINTUS

PELARGONIUM

Remembering the blossoming of the Rosa Damascena var. Ispahan

The winter has come. Finally. The snow slowly covered the slopes of the hills that once made the Roses Damascena blossoming; the time pass but the time comes back; just not to forget the absolute beauty of the Rose, I publish a picture of 2 flowers of Rosa Damascena var. Ispahan (i.e. Persian) that blossomed this early summer. Can't wait to meet up again with these colours!

Autumn 2018 - Cleaning of the Iris from weeds

This summer was quite rainy and the strong sun after the rain provoked a fast and extended growth of weeds in between the iris, even though we used the foils (I cannot imagine what a mess without the foils).

I have to admit that when I saw the situation on the fields my mood broke. This was the situation:

After a little, gathering all our forces we started - with a good help - the cleaning of all the iris; this work was accomplished just by hand with an enourmous financial and labour effort.

The result is this:

I think it was worthy!
It is also usefull to see how good are growing the iris on the fields; the use of the foils helped a lot in limitating the growth of the weeds.

Iris Pallida 2018 - New fields

We took the iris germanica and pallida planted in 2014 and in their place  - after a resting period - we planted an entire new field of iris pallida of around 850 iris.

The job was quite fast, considering the good weather and the sunny days of end September 2018.

As usual, we used the black foils to protect our cultivation anf for increase their quality.

Top: The soil was prepared, then the foil was set on it with squares cut for the iris.

Bottom: the beauty of the zone helped us to work harder in a good atmosphere

Bottom: the same photo of the first one, but with all the iris already planted.

Iris 2018. Works in progress

This year we started the extraction and plantation of the iris with new verve and some new ideas how to cultivate them. we decided to come back to our initial idea of foil (pacciamatura) criss-crossed but with a new technique that decreased the time spending.

We opted for planting just iris pallida,

Foto 1

We are going to plant this year around 5.000 new iris pallida, providing us in the next 3/4 years around 20.000 new bulbs.

Foto 2

Every square is protected by a little moat, conceived to collect water, if it is too much.

We also added a panel to show the year and the type of iris implanted.

Foto 3


We also noticed that the hybrid (i.e. germanica) are providing a very good quality roots and we planted then 200 iris of this kind (Foto 4)

Foto 4

Rosas Damascena are blossoming

As time ago mentioned, we also planted a long row (around 70 plants) of Rosa Damascena in two different variants: the Rosa Isphan (original from Iran) and the Rosa Kazanlik (original from Bulgaria).

We had the pleasure to see them blossoming; actually just the Rosa Isphan blossomed, even just after 4 month, while Kazanlik is still without its buds. 

I have to admit the colours are quite impressive likewise their scent.

Works May 2018

The huge rains of the month of May 2018 left a lot of high weeds all around the fields. For this reason we started to clean them up, tearing them off all by hand. Quite a huge job!

Map of production of the Iris in comparation with the UNESCO zones

Dear all,

as a lot of you know, Piedmont, or better the Province of Cuneo, or closer the zone of Low Langhe, Roero and Monferrato entered in 2014 in the UNESCO Heritage, as firts compound of cultivated land, because of the absolute beauty of the landscapes, something that no other rural part of Italy or France achieved, thus even better than the well movie-known Tuscany.

I would like to point out in the following map the UNESCO zones (in blue) in comparation with our production of iris. As you can see we are in the very zone of UNESCO where the wines have the top taste on the world (like Barbaresco, Barolo or Roero) and so we hope also our iris.

Varieties of Iris 2018

Some pictures about the different colours of the blossoming iris during this very rainy May 2018

Iris Pallida: blossoming May 2018

Finally the iris pallida, after the long-rainy period started to blossom; the scent in the air was amazing and the colours too.

We are happy to see that all the roots we planted last year grew and are unbelievably high.

(bottom: on the left you can also see the fading iris germanica)

Bottom: a still to be "Black Suited" iris: petals like silk!

Still fields of iris pallida in May

Rosa Damascena

As said, I planted also some Roses Damascenae in the variety Kazanlik and Ispahan. With them I am going to prepare a barrier all around the fields in order to create also a protection against wild animals and a very impressive visual impact (and maybe one day also essential oil)

As always to keep it clean I used my foil to cover the land and the results are quite impressive. This Rosa Damascena (this is a Ispahan) grew very fast - it was planted in December 2017) and it's going to blossom in the next days. (actually the month of May is considered to be the month of the roses but this year it is raining all the time and blossoming is delayed).

De Historia Stirpum - Leonhard Fuchs A.D. 1542

I always liked nature and books. So the good combination between this two passions is becoming my personal collection of herbals of the past.
As you can understand, it would be almost impossible to buy the original ones (and sincerly for me over my possibilities) and therefore I opted for the facsimle versions of herbals.

I don't want here to write any history of the evolution of the herbals, but simply point out the single volumes I am going to put together in order to build my personal herbal library.

This is the Aboca facsimile "De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes" published in Basilea in 1542. It is a real huge volume with a lot of picture and description of herbs and plants.

I chose between those - obviously - the Iris in the Latin text

Iryssima vs Messer Tulipano or Iris vs Tulips

This blog trats of a wonderful fair that every year is held in Pralormo (Turin), Piedmont, close to my cultivations. Usually I find a lot of cars slowing down my way to Govone and my curiosity grew, also because all Turin is covered with reclames for this unique exposition of around 80.000 colorfull tulips

This fantastic exposition is held in the gardens of the Castle of Pralormo, with quite a perfect match of ancient beauty and new nobility.

So on 23th April 2018 I went to visit it and it was time. The numbers are impressive but the total surface - for my eyes - quite reduced. The colours are quite amazing and the effect unique. Well "unique"... I would say almost unique, considering the iris cultivations of Iryssima.

In fact, having in mind the records of the images of Messer Tulipano (Mr. Tulip, but "Messer" is very old Italian) I went to Govone to see the Iris and their monotone colours.

I compare the pictures here underneath 1 tulips vs 1 iris:

Messer Tulipano

Iryssima

Messer Tulipano

Iryssima

Messer Tulipano

Iryssima

Messer Tulipano

Iryssima

Iryssima

Flowers vs flowers: what a beautiful and colourful fight!

Messer Tulipano

Well, one (Messer Tulipano of Pralormo)  is a real garden the other (Iryssima in Govone) a simple fields. But I liked this little comparision.

I hope you enjoed the beauty of the nature: nothing is so elegant and unique like this.