Perhaps Gladiolus imbricatus?

Thanks I'll look that up...

Were you recently vacationing along the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan? The glads you describe sound like the ones we have been selling at the market at the lake. Customers seem to really like them because they aren't as bulky as the traditional glad. They are more delicate looking. The are indeed a perennial; and, they are called, 'Nanus.' I don't have the exact name of the peachy/pink and yellow type because they are usually purchased as a mix. They are also called border glads by some bulb vendors.

Yes we were along the shores of Lk Mi in South Haven. Thanks for the info. I am going to try some, didn't know glads were perennial here in Michigan. South Haven is a great location for a Farmers Market, I'm sure you get lots of traffic!

Small world. I did meet you at the market then in South Haven! It is a beautiful location for a market as well as it is for the folks vacationing or "summering" along Michigan's west coast.

The small glads are perennial. Not so with the traditional glads. Not so with the acidanthera either:( Although along the lakeshore the zone is 6; and, now with the recent changes in the weather it's possibly a zone 7. The acidanthera may have been lost to very wet/soggy soil in the spring, and maybe not to a hard freeze.

Trish

Yes it is a small world, we live about an hour from South Haven, it's a great town, we enjoy coming over for the day, I'll be sure to look for you when I come back to the market, thanks for your help!

Trish - besides the "mini" glads, don't you have glads winter over? Most of mine do, but then, due to weeds (sigh), they didn't all come up. But, I'm thinking it might be best to plan on planting new ones each year? What do you do?

Wendy

Wendy,
I sometimes have glads come back, but it's not reliable. All the little corms that fall off the large one when I pull them in the fall seem to come up. It looks like grass coming up down that row. But like you mentioned, due to the weeding factor it just doesn't seem worth it. I also rotate the spot I put my glads in every year. Some growers don't even bother pulling and storing, but I can't seem to throw away those large corms that come out in fall. And you can get some huge glads the next year. I do like the idea of the mini's for market, and will try and find someone who sells those. They sound like the same thing I bought one year for an earlier bloom, they called them "orchid glads", but it wasn't worth it for the early part, they only came less than a week before the others.
Cheryl

Think you can find the winter-hardy gladiolus in a number of catalogs come Spring. As mentioned, most I've seen usually have a mix of colors - generally on the pink-rose-white shades w/ some scarlet. Park's listed a separate color 'Impressive' in the 2007 catalog. Brecks had 'Nymph.' I saw one listing which had Gladiolus nanus hybrids in those two names and also 'Comet', 'Nathalie", and "Prince Claus.' Can't vouch for all that info, but maybe it will help later on.