Is it really a creation of nature? This is the question that almost every plant lover asks when he first sees a flower covered with a geometric maroon-white pattern of checkerboard fields.Nature was certainly in a great mood when she came up with such a bizarre gift for a modest onion plant.
While admiring the extraordinary Fritillaria meleagris checkerboard, we would like to immediately transfer it to our garden. The chessboard season lasts from April to May, when its colorful flowers stand out clearly from other plants. However, a single flower is quite short-lived. Usually, it keeps beautiful form for no longer than 5 days.
Our native wild perennial is very rarely found in its natural habitat, i.e. on a wet meadow.However, more and more often the chessboard appears in our immediate surroundings.Small colorful arrangements with tulips and horned (or tricolor) violets in pots or bowls come to life just after winter is over.
However, the most impressive is the chessboard planted in large numbers over a larger area. It can be the edge of a garden pond or a shaded bed under shrubs, for example under a magnolia or Lamarck rotisserie. One plant has only one flower. Two very rarely develop.This is why it takes a lot of bulbs to make a checkerboard flowering spectacular.It is quite airy plant with grassy leaves, reaching a height of at most 15-30 cm. However, its flowers beautifully decorate the semi-shaded corners of the garden.
The garden chessboard has two forms.One develops flowers with the color and pattern of a wild species. The second is the 'Alba' variety with snow-white flower petals.Its decorative heads harmonize beautifully with white flowers or various shades of blue.It also looks great with daffodils, anemones and sapphires, as well as pink bergenia and red-leaved cranberries.
The chessboard should be provided with plenty of space. Once the plant settles in, it gradually turns this part of the garden into a wild meadow.The filigree chessboard is, however, a picky plant with fixed requirements.It nests only where the soil is clay, moist and cool. Otherwise, it will quickly disappear from the garden. And that would be a really great loss.
Remember when planting
Wild chessboard is a plant that disappears in the natural environment. On the Red List, it is distinguished by the letter E, which denotes species particularly endangered with extinction.In our discount, we can only plant onions from crops bought in a garden store.
The best effect is obtained by allocating about 40 plants per 1 m² of surface. It is enough to put 3 to 5 bulbs in small pots. Before planting, soak the bulbs in water for a few hours. We plant them at the end of August, because they take root quite slowly and they need a lot of time for it.
