After visiting the Kerman region we drove to the northwest, to the city
of Yazd.
Here we wanted to visit the nearby Shir Kuh mountains, home of both
Dionysia janthina and Dionysia curviflora. Once in the Shir Kuh we got
some big
problems with our car, a leaf spring in the front wheel suspension broke!
Luckily we still could drive, by driving very slowly we managed to reach
the city
of Yazd. We first had to go to a garage to see what exactly had happened,
here
they saw that the leaf spring was broken. A new one had to be send from
Germany, after all it took 14 days before we could continue. In the mean
time
one of mechanics had fixed a 'new' leaf spring, and with this we were able
to go
back to Shir Kuh. But we still had to drive very carefully, the 'new'
spring wasn't
half as strong as the original one!
On the 14th of April 2003 we first
went to a gorge near the town of Taft, here we
found Dionysia janthina. Unfortunately all plants were passed flowering,
due to
the problems with our car we had missed this!
Most of the plants grow on the north side of this gorge, which is in fact
not a part
of the Shir Kuh range. The altitude was approx. 1850m.
In cultivation this is also a very beautiful species and not
particularly difficult.
Usually plants can become rather old, but younger plants are mostly more
floriferous. It can be quite easily be propagated by cuttings.
