You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
To paraphrase that well-worn Shakespearean saw about a rose: A glad by any other name is still a glad. But...is it one gladiolus or one gladiola? Is it two gladiolus, two gladiolas, two gladioluses, or two gladioli? All of these forms of the name appear in a Google search of "gladiolus." Proper Latin would dictate only two: gladiolus (singular) and gladioli (plural). I prefer to use "glad," which avoids this confusion altogether.
Origin of popular garden glads
The first hybrid glads appeared in European nurseries around 1837. Victorian gardeners, Monet included, adored them. They were first hybridized by English horticulturist, Dean Herbert, beginning in 1810. He used various species glads from the Cape of South Africa. These included G. angustus, G. cardinalis (at right), G. carneus (top left below), and G. tristis (bottom left below). Other hybridizers soon followed suit. Among them were the great French nurseryman, Victor Lemoine, and German plantsman, Max Leichtlin. Sadly, none of these hybrids appear in gardens today. As more and more glad varieties--today numbering in the thousands--flooded the market, older varieties were abandoned and lost forever. It is now very difficult to find varieties dating back beyond the 1940s.
Linguistic roots
The word "Gladiolus" comes from the Roman gladius meaning sword.A small or diminutive sword was called a gladiolus. Carolus Linnaeus of Sweden, often called the Father of Plant Taxonomy1, is said to have chosen the name gladiolus because of the plant's sword-shaped leaves. The word gladiator shares the same root (glad-) and refers to a Roman soldier who "lived or died by the sword."Common names for the gladiolus include glad, corn-flag, corn iris, and sword-lily.
Popularity
Why are glads so popular?Because they have so many worthy attributes:
·Low cost
·Ease of culture
·Relatively free of insect pests
·Extremely wide color range
·Long blooming season
·Rapid increase in corms2
·Easy carry-over from year to year in zones where they are not hardy
Culture
Glads grow from corms, which store food at the base of the leaves.Soon after foliage appears in spring, a new corm develops on top of the old one.By the end of the growing season, the old corm has usually shriveled and died.The papery husks around the corm are the bases of old leaves.They help protect the corm from injury, from infections by insects and diseases, and aid in water retention.Cormels, little corms that develop around the base of the mother corm, can be harvested and stored with the parent corms. Planted in succeeding years, they will mature into corms and begin flowering by the second or third year.The mother corm produces the greatest number of cormels when it is planted close to the soil surface. Mature cormels will produce flowers identical to the parent corm.
You can also propagate glads by division of the older corms. If large corms have two buds, the corm can be cut in two so that each section has a bud.Wait a day or two before planting these divisions to give them a chance to dry and "heal" for several days.
Generally speaking, the only soil glads will not do well in is in soil that drains poorly.(If puddles remain on your soil for 24 hours after a good rain, it is too wet to grow glads.)It is best to plant corms in full sun.You will be rewarded with brighter colors, and stalks will be sturdier than when planted in partial shade, where they tend to flop over.
In gardening zones where the ground freezes in the winter, you can plant corms as soon as the soil is workable in the spring.In our Zone 5 gardens, that usually translates into early April.By staggering plantings up to mid-June, we can have continuous bloom right up to the first frost.Depending on the variety and on growing conditions, your glads will bloom as early as 60 days from planting to as late as 120 days.
Storage
Dig corms in the fall, when foliage begins to yellow and die back.Make sure that you have harvested all the corms by the time of the first hard freeze. If possible, dig corms when the soil is dry to make digging and cleaning easier. Shake off any loose soil, being careful to save any cormels you may want for future propagation.Breaking off the plant as close to the corm as possible, rather than cutting it, will leave a small hole in the husk on the top of the corm.This allows moisture in the corm to evaporate faster during the drying process.It is important to dry corms as fast as possible to prevent breakdown during storage.
Make sure that the corms are clean before you store them.I do this by running water over them and, if necessary, scrubbing them gently with a vegetable brush.To dry them more quickly, I place the corms on top of inverted plant trays (the kind that have holes in the bottom) to promote air circulation around the corms.Then I locate the trays near the furnace in our basement to provide a warm, dry place for the corms to cure.
Allow about two weeks' curing time.Remove the corms from the trays, turn the trays right side up and fill each tray with one layer of corms.Do not stack corms or trays on top of each other.I store the corms in a dark, unheated room in the basement where the temperature ranges from approximately 35-45°F.You may dust corms with any insecticide labeled for thrips.Since I garden organically, I don't use pesticides and, luckily, have never had a disease problem with glads.
If you've never planted glads in your garden before, I urge you to try them.They are easy to grow and will reward you with spectacular blooms in the garden as well as in the vase.Individual flowers look lovely floating in a glass bowl.With the help of some florist tape and pins, I've even made a corsage for my wife.It got oos and ahs from admirers of "that beautiful orchid you're wearing!"
2A corm is a swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ.
Thanks to Nevin Smith at Suncrest Wholesale Nurseries for permission to use the G. cardinals photo. G. carneus and G. tristis photos are from sulkyrob.
An enthusiastic gardener for over 50 years, my first plant was a potted Meyer Lemon tree ordered from a comic book ad at age 15. I still have it, and it’s still bearing lemons! My wife and I garden on 3/4 of an acre, both flowers and vegetables. Although our garden is private, it's listed with the Smithsonian Institution as a national heritage garden and is on the National Register of Historic Places. We garden organically and no-till. Our vegetable garden contains a seed bank of vegetables brought to this country from Germany in the mid-1800s. An article on our gardens appears in the Spring 2008 issue of Country Gardens magazine. For more info: http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/m/LarryR/. Photos that appear in my articles without credit are my own.
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on August 18, 2008 at 8:17 AM:
Hope springs eternal, so I once again bought some "hardy" glads. Any tips for making them truly hardy? Mulch? Thanks for your charming article.
...
Posted by threegardeners (from North Augusta, ON) on August 18, 2008 at 10:42 AM:
Hi Carrie, I tried an experiment one year since I was tired of digging them up every fall...I left a few in the ground just to see what would happen. Low and behold, they came up in the spring. No extra mulch or anything, just a fend for yourself attitude.
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on August 18, 2008 at 11:29 AM:
Huh! I've bought "hardy" glads that only came up once. . . ? Oh well, very pretty, that year, they were!
...
Posted by threegardeners (from North Augusta, ON) on August 18, 2008 at 11:50 AM:
Three years old. This ones been in the ground since it was a baby bulbet.
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on August 18, 2008 at 11:56 AM:
Lovely!
...
Posted by LarryR (from South Amana, IA) on August 18, 2008 at 9:23 PM:
Hi Carrie and 3G--I've had the same experience with the "hardy" glads I've tried, Carrie. And I've also had some "regular" glads that I missed in my fall digging come up again in the following spring, 3G. I even tried potting up a "hardy" glad and then storing pot and all in an unheated basement room for the winter. It didn't survive either! (I have to admit that soil moisture in the pot may have been an issue.)
Thanks to both of you for bringing up the hardiness issue. I have always intended to leave some regular glads in the ground on purpose to see what would happen, but by the time fall comes around, I automatically dig them all up and forget about leaving some behind. I'm going to put a sticky note on my calendar right now for late September!
Recently I've gotten interested in species glads. They're really quite beautiful. The question is: Can I winter them over in the basement? In intend to find out! Below are pix of three varieties from South Africa. Best--Larry☼
