Albuca

Rachel Saunders silverhill@yebo.co.za
Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:51:14 PST
All Albucas are now Ornithogalums - it has been published.  In our seed
catalogue we are still calling them Albuca as everyone knows what Albucas
look like!  The reason for the lumping is that there are quite a few species
that overlap the 2 genera and cannot be put into either genus with any
certainty.  If anyone is interested I can look for the reference.
Regards
Rachel Saunders
Tel +27 21 762 4245
Fax +27 21 797 6609
PO Box 53108, Kenilworth, 7745 South Africa


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mary Sue Ittner" <msittner@mcn.org>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 5:34 AM
Subject: [pbs] Albuca


> Dear Linda,
>
> I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether all Albucas are now
> Ornithogalums. As Jane wrote, Manning and Goldblatt do seem to be lumping
a
> lot of South African genera. Ornithogalum was already a large genus before
> <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Albuca,
> <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Dipcadi,
> Galtonia, Neopatersonia, and
>
<http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Pseudoga
ltonia
> were to be added to it. In South Africa when we visited and looked at
> plants in the field there were Ornithogalums that I thought were Albucas
> until told otherwise because they looked like the Albucas I was familiar
with.
>
> On the other hand we heard that Speta was splitting Scilla which like
> Albuca is in the same family into many new genera which is going in the
> opposite direction at the same time. Some of those proposed changes I
> understand from Julian Slade who follows all of this could change again
> with some of the new genera (Fessia, Pfosseria, Zagrosia - possibly also
> Alrawia, Othocallis, and even Puschkinia)  being sunk into Hyacinthus.
>
> It does seem like Manning and Goldblatt are very highly respected in South
> Africa and often what they propose is accepted.
>
> We have discussed on this list that we can choose to go along or not and
as
> long as you include the name of the person who published the specific
> epithet you are always correct. Unfortunately for most of us gardeners
that
> is not information that most of us pay much attention to. I think it
> becomes increasingly difficult to know if we are talking about the same
> plant if it goes by many names. I try to add the synonyms to the wiki if I
> can figure out what they are.
>
> If you are interested in Albuca I hope you have checked out our wiki page
> as Albuca was one of our topics of the week and Julian Slade provided us
> with a very complete introduction. Perhaps he will comment on Linda's
> question if he is reading this.
>
> >Mary Sue, are all Albuca now Ornithogalum? or is this still in the
proposal
> >stage.
>
>
> Mary Sue
>
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