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Messages - Carlos

#1
Madeira is like the Azores. I am not sure, but they also have specific regulations within Portugal, like we have with the Canaries. 

I would be eager to send them to you from Spain, but I have the same problem as I have with Canarius: they won't ship to contintental Spain. 

But if I ever order again, I will tell you, as I can have them sent to Faro in the Algarve, then to Spain. I could then send your share to you. Only that he did not reply to my last emails. 

Carlos
#2
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 09, 2025, 01:18:28 PM
Nive Romulea @Too Many Plants! 

Side view of R. crocea

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Narcissus gaditanus. The smell apparently shifts from a quite typical jonquil smell to somethimg similar to effervescent vitamin C pills.

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Narcissus romieuxii zaianicus. Surprisingly similar to the blancoi found in Spain.

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And Tulipa agenensis 'sharonensis', a fantastic tulip from the Palestinian coast which is showy and has a reasonable size, but does not need a cold winter. There are very few tulips which can be grown well in zone 10, but this one seems just right.

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#3
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 08, 2025, 08:05:19 AM
@CG100  I will have a try.Romulea from the northern hemisphere continue to baffle me.. Romulea grandiscapa is a stunner from the Canary islands, it perhaps produces the widest flower in this area. Strangely, it has been lumped as a variety / subspecies of R. Columnae, which has flowers that fit in a 10 cents coin (a bit bigger than a dime).

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Romulea ramiflora, two accessions (one is sold as 'rollii' from Chios island by Oron Peri, but it's obviously not).

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Romulea malenconiana from Morocco. I was lucky enough to get one strain / clone collected by Salmon, Bird and Lovell and still true to type. It has an amazing feathering combined with wite. Some say that it belongs in ligustica, but I din't think so.

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Some individuals of malenconiana are just incredible, like this one:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150305077

More R. leichtliniana, two plants with different colours.

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And a comparison between 'true' bulbocodium and the eastern leichtliniana.

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#4
General Discussion / Re: Crinum luteolum/flaccidum
February 08, 2025, 07:31:23 AM
Hi. Not an autonomous region like Madeira in Portugal, but there are specific phytosanitary regulations for exchanges with and from the mainland. These regulations can only affect operations within the country, but have no force between other countries, as that would be against the free circulation of goods witin the EU.

So we have the absurd situation that some pests not regulated by EU laws can enter the Canaries from third countries (and they do), but not from mainland Spain, and vice-versa. Let's make Spain great again...

The solution is to have someone order from outside Spain and ship again, but you have to bother the person and I still have not tried (I have more interesting plants to be imported from South Africa, for example).
#5
General Discussion / Re: Crinum luteolum/flaccidum
February 08, 2025, 02:15:07 AM
Thanks, but it's not so easy. Canarius don't ship to peninsular Spain, and they just did not answer my emails.

I will someday ask a friend in Portugal to order for me.

Carlos
#6
General Discussion / Re: Crinum luteolum/flaccidum
February 07, 2025, 11:11:50 AM
Hi, I am interested, too
#7
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 06, 2025, 01:10:39 PM
Ah, yes, I always forget that you are in the UK...

I only have one accession of jonquilla, it came from a village in Madrid province, probably from a wild population.i have never searched for offsets but I have to repot them and I will have a look.

That dwarf Petasites must be lovely...
#8
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 05, 2025, 09:19:11 PM
Hi @CG100 

I'd like to send you some seeds of greatly scented Narcissus. You should smell broussonetii, also jonquilla and obsoletus.

Tête-à-tête is basically a pseudonarcissus, so wild seeds should give scented plants. I have a bit old seeds which I could send now, if you have cool springs they could still grow a bulb big enough to survive the summer. I can ask for fresh seeds to sow in autumn, as well.
#9
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 03, 2025, 09:52:39 PM
Interesting. My smell has always been good, something that I shared with my mother. She only used very faint fragrances as many could cause her a headache, and I'm the same.

Smell has been neglected by botanists as dried plants only smell of dry plants, but in Narcissus it is tremendously important. Well, quite important.

For example, different strains of bulbocodium have marked differences, from no smell to an 'insecticide' smell going through a quite pleasant one. Of course, to some extent it depends on each nose...

My last suprise was with calcicola, which has a mixture of paint and some other chemical. I wonder which insects are attracted to that. But cuatrecasasii in the same section  has a pleasant smel...
#10
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 03, 2025, 01:45:49 PM
Hi

Cantabricus: foxy smell, rather unpleassnt

Bastitanus: lighter foxy smell, sometimes more pleasant

Montielanus: good smell

#11
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 03, 2025, 11:20:57 AM
Something less dense:

Narcissus cantabricus, ex Dylan Hannon after four years. I think that this is a Spanish strain.

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And two hybrids

N × bastitanus, again

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N × montielanus (blancoi × coronatus = pallidulus)

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#12
Current Photographs / Re: February 2025
February 02, 2025, 11:46:37 PM
Hi, yes, that's Drimia numidica. It does not offset very often, that's a nice clump.

Let me say something about "moving genera".

According to the code, if a name fulfils some requirements when published (i.e. it has a protologue in Latin or -from 2007- in English, it is published in a book or journal with an ISSN, for new taxa a holotype is designated and a specimen is deposited in a herbarium, etc.) the name is "validly published" and it can be used. That does not render the name "correct", but you can use it if you think it is.

So "Urginea" was "validly published" in 1834 by a French author (despite his German surname), Steinheil, and we can use it if we think that Mediterranean species do not belong in Drimia. But according to Goldblatt and Manning, all "Urginea" are grouped with SA species of Drimia, so there's not really a need to split the genus (and of course not to split it into the myriad of microgenera that the Austrian Speta and Pfosser and my colleagues from the next province have created).

There's two additional problems if you accept Urginea:

1. the type of the genus is Urginea fugax, and in 1836 Steinheil created the genus Squilla for the rest of Mediterranean plants, as he believed that they did not belong in Urginea sensu stricto. But as it is very similar to "Scilla" (though pronounced with a sounding U, so it's different phonetically), Squilla was neglected for decades and all species were placed in Urginea. Then Speta created Charybdis to house all species except U. fugax, because of the controversy Squilla / Scilla. This did not have much acceptance, though Charybdis glaucophylla from Sardinia was initially described as belonging in this genus.

2. It was not until until 2016 that Martínez et al. requested a binding decission from the Committee of Nomenclature.  The Committee decided that in the end Squilla is sufficiently distinct from Scilla not to be confused, so that leaves Charybdis as a later synonym, and the plants should be named Squilla IF they are proved to be different from Urginea fugax, ant that IS STILL NOT CLEAR. If they are sufficiently close phylogenetically, all should be Urginea, or all should be Drimia.

I have the help of a Portuguese Phd in molecular biology and we have spent almost 2 years gathering samples and trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle, I can only say that some results are surprising.

So personallly I prefer to use Drimia for everything until we are done with the study. But you can use Squilla. You can even use Urginea for U. fugax for the time being....

Sorry if it seems complicated, I did not mess all up. I just try to understand and shed some light.

Thanks to Dylan Hannon, who will be sending some very, very important samples for the study, and thus saving me one  or more trips to Morocco (which I'd love to visit , anyway).

Carlos








#13
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 29, 2025, 02:21:22 PM
Very nice!

There is a trend in Spain of naming fertile versions of normally sterile Narcissus hybrids as new species, called 'nomospecies'. Others think that simply the name of the hybrid without the '×' sign should be used, but there are still F1 sterile hybrids, so I don't agree. How a fertile version is formed is s bit more technical, but basically they arise from the fusion of unreduced gametes, so the offspring has a double number of chromosomes.

This was described as the fertile version of Narcissus × tuckeri, or N. blancoi × N. fernandesii, and was called Narcissus vilchezii, after.a count or something named Vílchez, who founded the village of Vilches (Andalusians pronounce z and s the same, when they don't just skip all final s).

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Two versions of fernandesii / cordubensis

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And one romieuxii 'zaianicus' (which I believe that came from Dylan Hannon as seeds in 2020 or 21), sharing the pot with Narcissus obesus.

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The smell of the zaianicus is 'foxy' as in cantabricus and peroccidentalis, so it is very likely that romieuxii is one of the parents of peroccidentalis, which I believe is the 'fertile version' of the ancient hybrid.

#14
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 25, 2025, 03:39:03 AM
Nice plants, Arnold!

Variability in Narcissus × montielanus (blancoi × cantabricus). The white one is an F1 plant, and the other two are backcrosses with blancoi. They have a smell (pleasant, unlike cantabricus), but the white one doesn't (like blancoi). All have long, thin leaves like cantabricus.

Taxonomical notes: Narcissus blancoi is also lumped within N. hedraeanthus as subsp. luteolentus, but it has a very different ecology and a different chemical profile. Anyway, if you choose that name, the hybrid with cantabricus is to be called N. × cazorlanus nothosubsp. montielanus because cazorlanus was named first, even if all the evidence shows that it is an imaginary hybrid made up by the phony Fernández Casas. Hedraeanthus simply grows above cantabricus, above 1000 m, and no one has found the hybrid after the publication.

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#15
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 18, 2025, 08:57:47 AM
Hi, I am having spring in January. I didn't dxpect so many Romulea to flower so early. But after two days of rain at 8-10°, we got 18° again... so pollinatirs are active.

Romulea leichtliniana. It has been considered as a variety of bulbocodium, but it is more robust and the flowers are 1.5 times bigger. Fascinating.

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Sternbergia vernalis (fischeriana)

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Allium chamaemoly, eastern form, from Greece

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