PBS Forum

Prospero hanbury, a jewel from the Negev desert. It blooms without any rain.

Colchicum lusitanum


Autonöe madeirensis with an unusual late summer flower stalk

Some late, late summer flowers at last

Barnardia numidica. Again the discussion over splitting / not splitting Scilla. It seems that this splitting has somewhat more standing / acceptance than that of Drimia.

This plant has tiny bracts, unlike Prospero, it has only one seed per locule, unlike Prospero, and produces leaves together with the scapes, unlike Prospero. True Scillas flower in the spring.

The seeds of B. numidica are indeed very different from those of B. japonica, being round and not elongated. I have not succeeded in getting seedlings of any of them so far, so when I saw bulbs of numidica for sale, I feared that I wouldn't click on "add to the basket" fast enough!



Here Prospero obtusifolium to compare



LEft: Drimia numidica (this is what everybody calls maritima in California). Right: true D. maritima



Drimai purpurascens (Urginea undulata) from Algeria, I still have to confirm that it is purpurascens, it could be serotina.



And finally, Acis valentina

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on September 17, 2024, 02:44:51 PM

Quote from: Carlos on September 17, 2024, 01:20:31 PMOk, I quit.

Sorry, Carlos. I don't mean to discourage you. I'm just saying, you need to find a more robust solitary trunking species to consider...

But as I said before...the correct way to ID it in lieu of guessing, is inspect the flowers well.

Hi, yes, that's why I quit. As I said I'm not really into Aloe, I only like to try to identify unknown plants, but this genus is discouraging. I would need to spend a lot of time with this subject, I would if the plant was mine, but... I hope that Uli will understand, hehe.

Ok, I quit.

Great story!! If it had happened to me, I would have climbed again to the crater and got eaten, I know myself.

Another name I was handling is Aloe ballyi

Hi

I am not much into Aloe and there seems not to be specific papers on the flora if the Ngorongoro, but I found something generic on Tanzanian Aloe with distribution maps and I think that it could be Aloe volkensii.

Hi, I don't translate my posts, I write them in English. Of course I can fail to explain well what I mean to say, sorry.

I agree about the Stilfontein plant. It is the other N. krigei falcata on their list which does not match the description of the taxon (broadish leaves). Stilfontein seems OK.

Thanks to both of you for the info.

Carlos

Hi, I think that it is indeed caerulea (Zephyranthes). I've been told that it grows in cooler conditions than most other Zephs, being an autumn-winter grower.

Does your plants match that? If not, it should be something else.

Hi, I don't like how she replied to me in the past,I know that the mistake is theirs, I just want to know what it is.

Thanks, Robin, they get morning sun. I  read in the SABC site that it grows in a drier area, so I added a good  deal of pebbles and I'm watering once a week.

Bowdenii are in the same conditions and don't seem so happy, I'll try to move them.

Carlos

Hi again.

I have been reading and chatting with Robin.

I finally  think that the Spanish team might be wrong, and Goldblatt and Manning right. All these "genera" are probably best regarded as Ornithogalum, divided in subgenera and sections.

That means that it is probably the same with Drimia, another group which has been ultra-splitted by the same team, to a great extent following also Rafinesque, Speta and Pfosser.

As Socrates said, All I know is that I know nothing....

Carlos

Hi, I ordered both N. falcata or N. krigei falcata from SABC, one from Stilfontein which seems to be the right thing:



And the "regular" one which seems another species,. I know that it is difficult without flowers, but are there any hints?



I now find it strange that this Nerine is listed as "spiral leaf Nerine" when krigei is not particularly spiralled, or at least leaves should be wider (or are the bulbs still young?)... I am new to Nerine and most SA bulbs.

Thanks

Hi, @Too Many Plants!

I know I might become impopular for supporting the splitting of Albuca (as I've written, it was a botanist from the US who did it first, or more precisely corrected and enlarged what the British Salisbury had done).

At first I thought that he (Rafinesque) meant a plant like yours when he created Nemaulax, as he stated: 'the genus Albuca is very near Skilla in the hexandrous species, but the real Albuca has three sterile stamens: all the other species united thereto are aliens like this [Nemaulax]'.

Nemaulax was described as followed (translated from Latin): 'different from Albuca; six tepals, the inner ones hooded at the tip, six unequal stamens, three being shorter, filaments canaliculated, trigonous style, three-lobed stigma'. The type species is Albuca fastigiata, with white and green flowers. The plants usually shown as this species have the three erect inner tepals typical of Albuca, so I admit that Nemaulax should be synonimised, or should have been left as a subgenus. But Müller- Dobblies seem not to have known Rafinesque's Flora Telluriana and she created Albuca subg. Mitrotepalum U. Müll.-Doblies (= Albuca sect. Branciona (Salisb.) J.C. Manning & Goldblatt). Manning & Goldblatt, in turn, did not know neither M.-Dobblies's work, nor Flora Telluriana.

As for Albuca fastigiata, it might have been mistaken for A caudata [currently known from Addo in the west to Grahamstown in the east, below 600 m, with an outlying population as far inland as Somerset East, reaching 900 m], Albuca bateniana (with a proliferous bulb) or the more recently described Albuca bakeri [from Jansenville to Alice and the Keiskamma river in the Eastern Cape, with two outlying populations near Calitzdorp in the Western Cape].. But this paper did not include fastigiata in the comparative table ...

https://phytokeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1382


All this said, I don't know what your plant is, probably Ornithogalum sp. according to Manning & Goldblatt, or a taxon in one of Rafinsque's splitted genera, maybe Stellarioides or Ethesia.

Carlos

Only worth photographing geophyte seen in a short vacation, Allium oleraceum at above 1400 m, pine forest on acid soil, Teruel province, Spain.

The three main traits are the bulbils in the inflorescence, the nodding flowers and the truncated ovary. 


Carlos

Thanks, Robin.

My point is, if the original author said erect flowers, the real plant has erect flowers. Or he could have been misled by seeing only a dried specimen, too (artifact due to how the flowers were pressed). I need to get an image of Thunberg's specimen to try to ascertain this.

I'd be very grateful if you could share photos of the flowers in your area.

According to the research I mentioned (and to Rafinesque, in the 18th century) the species with 6 fertile stamens "clearly" do not belong in Albuca and thus it has alternatively been "splitted" into Coilonox, Eliokarmos, Trimelopter, etc., or rather these "Rafinesquian genera" have been resurrected / reinstated / claimed.

Peter Goldblatt is retired, but Manning is still active and to some extent "fighting back" the Spanish team, for example swapping Trimelopter crispolanatum and Eliokarmos humanii (published in 2020) to Albuca and Ornithogalum, respectively, just because he does not accept Eliokarmos, nor Trimelopter....  When experts don't work for knowledge but for their own conceptions, knowledge itself suffers.

Who is right? I don't know, it's not that I'm Spanish but I tend to think that lumping is not the solution with these plants. I would probably be OK with a treatment with subgenera, but Manning & Goldblatt stuck to Ornithogalum and the Spanish team claim that the genera are well defined (monophyletic) and stick to their approach of separate genera.


Personally, I just want to know what Albuca viscosa is.

Carlos

Hi, it is summer, there are few posts, and I was given some bulbs of an Albuca that made me research a bit, so I'm afraid this is another one of my posts on misapplied names.

I got this plant [Albuca 'spiralis' ex Château Pérouse, from EX02 20240312 https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php?topic=820.msg5741#msg5741] identified as Albuca viscosa but I have looked at the first descriptions of Albuca in the narrow sense and they are plants with (mostly) nodding flowers with three spread outer tepals and the inner tepals united hiding THREE fertile stamens.

But there are some species with six spreading tepals, yellow or white with a green central stripe, and SIX fertile stamens. These plantas were placed in two genera, Coilonox and Nemaulax, by the US botanist Rafinesque, who has been largely ignored and is considered an ultra-splitter, but from what I have read in modern studies based both on morphology, biochemical compounds and genetic analysis, he was right in many, many cases.

Albuca viscosa was described by Linnaeus's son in his Supplementum Plantarum of 1781 as "Albuca floribus erectis, foliis linearibus villoso-viscosis. Habitat in Cap. Bonae Spei. thunberg"

That is "Albuca with ERECT flowers, linear, glandular-pubescent leaves. Habitat in the Cape of Good Hope. Thunberg".

The reference to "Thunberg" is to a dried specimen in a herbarium. As it was cited by Linnaeus, it is "original material" and the type for the taxon (but as Linnaeus did not include the word Typus, a formal typification should have been made, I have not checked if it has been done).

A few years later, the Swedish botanist Jonas Dryander placed Albuca viscosa within the division "All stamens fertile", and added to the original description "petalis interioribus apice fornicatis*, foliis piloso-glandulosis", that is "Inner tepals arched at the apex, glandular-pubescent leaves.

[*fornicatus,-a,-um (adj.): arched, provided with small arched scale-like appendages in the corolla-tube, lit. 'vaulted, i.e. an arched structure, a space covered by an arched structure [especially underground; taken from A grammatical dictionary of Botanical Latin, www.mobot.org]

Thunberg was also Swedish and Dryander could see his herbarium and the sheet of Albuca viscosa, which is now in the Upsala herbarium (UPS V-008245) but not digitised online, unfortunately. But it is quite obvious that the six fertile stamens can be seen in the specimen, and so he added the information to the description of the plant.

To sum up, it is clear (for me) that true Albuca viscosa has erect flowers with a rotate perianth, with six fertile stamens and arched or hooded tips in the inner tepals, probably with a tuft of hairs. All these traits were used by Rafinesque to define Coilonox,  a genus which has been "resurrected" by a Spanish team in my region, in the Alicante University, and Michael F. Fay from Kew Gardens, UK.

Molecular phylogenetics of subfamily Ornithogaloideae (Hyacinthaceae) based on nuclear and plastid DNA regions, including a new taxonomic arrangement. Annals of Botany 107(1):1-37

(PDF) Molecular phylogenetics of subfamily Ornithogaloideae (Hyacinthaceae) based on nuclear and plastid DNA regions, including a new taxonomic arrangement (researchgate.net)
Sadly, the only Coilonox included in their study were concordianum, polyphyllum, secundum and suaveolens, so we have no confirmation of Albuca viscosa being a Coilonox other than that made through morphology, and they did not include any Nemaulax (fastigiata, for example, type for the genus).

Personally, Goldblatt and Manning were very good at Iridaceae, but just messed it all up in Hyacinthaceae by recombining many species into Ornithogalum and keeping all Drimia. I think that the research of Martínez-Azorín et al. should be added to the Wiki.

Final remark: if the plants growing near @Robin Jangle are not spiralis and not viscosa, what are they? Maybe my plant is Albuca spiralis after all?