Neomarica

Lee Poulsen wpoulsen@pacbell.net
Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:08:02 PST
I'm no expert in this. But I was fortunate to have been able to visit Mauro Peixoto in Brazil several times, and he has in his shade houses the entire collection of Neomarica species that Lindolpho Capellari gathered and used during the course of his research for his thesis. Lindolpho deposited them with Mauro because Mauro is able to care for and continue growing them. There are also a number of Trimezia species. I tried to get some photos of them, but they flower sporadically and some are only open for a few hours in the mornings, and I was only able to visit at a specific day and time when there was a break in the work I was doing in Brazil and I had time to drive over to Mauro's place (about an hour and half away).

In any case, Mauro is there all the time and is able to photograph them in bloom. So another place you can go to try to see what looks comparable is his website, http://www.brazilplants.com/. In particular, he has a Neomarica page <http://brazilplants.com/iridaceae/neomarica/…>, and he has a number of Trimezia photos on this page: <http://brazilplants.com/iridaceae/…>. His photos of Trimezia martinicensis (whether it's the synonym T. galaxioides or what he used to believe was T. martinicensis but later found out was T. connata) show a distinctly bowl-shaped flower. I did see them before they opened on one visit but the buds are basically spherical to ovoid looking and maybe only 1 cm in diameter at that point, much smaller than most of the Neomarica buds, which were always long pointed conical shapes. And they were very yellow. Mauro's photos of N. longifolia have petals that are not uniformly yellow and the yellow is paler. Andrew's photo looks a lot more like Trimezia steyermarkii to me.

I haven't yet had the time to go through all the photos I took on those visits. But I've told Mary Sue that when I get the time, and have gone through all those photos, I plan to upload any that turned out well to the wiki.

In the meantime, since Alberto Castillo identified the T. steyermarkii on the wiki, maybe between him and Mauro, they can figure out which is what. And also tell us what the major differences are between Trimezia and Neomarica. (Mauro told me during one of my visits when I asked, but I didn't write it down and forgot exactly what he said.)

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m


On Dec 6, 2011, at 8:23 AM, Mary Sue Ittner wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I need some help. 

> One of them was a plant called Neomarica 
> longifolia, a yellow flowered species. 

>  found a photo of something that looked just 
> like it in Thad Howard's book that was described 
> as Trimezia martinicensis 

> Jim Waddick later saying all the 
> yellow ones are now in Trimezia (not a synonym 
> listed by Kew or The Plant List for this species) 
> and a post from Jim Waddick saying that this 
> species also didn't belong in Neomarica according 
> to Alberto Castillo.  It is interesting to note 
> that in the Manning and Goldblatt Iris book

>  describing Neomarica it notes that flowers are 
> radially symmetric, fugacious, cream, yellow, or 
> blue so they are at least including yellow 
> flowers in Neomarica. In describing the 
> difference between the two genera, they say that 
> Neomarica is distinguished by its creeping 
> rhizome and broadly winged, leafy flowering stem.

> Also I hope Lee will add to the wiki when he has 
> time the Neomarica species he said he was growing 
> in the archves, N. sabini, we don't have pictured.




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