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Messages - Carlos

#16
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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#17
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








#18
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.

#19
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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#20
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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#21
General Discussion / Re: EU bulb joint order
January 13, 2025, 09:53:25 PM
Hi, many thanks for organizing it.
#22
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 13, 2025, 07:02:33 AM
#23
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 12, 2025, 07:45:35 AM
1. I think that their taxonomy is better resolved. Here it is a mess of names, 'species' which have never been relocated, etc. Even the choromosome number has not been correctly studied for some species.

2. They can hybridize with what I have. I am already thinking about how to prevent this on my native plants.

3. My collection is getting difficult to manage.

4. There are many more interesting plants for me to spend money on first.

5. Speaking of SA, I prefer to focus on Amaryllidaceae, and maybe Massonia and Gladiolus.More tempskyana, this accession came from Samos island.

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Crocea, or bulbocodium subsp. crocea

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Bulbocodium (subsp. bulbocodium,) from southern Italy, maybe Apulia (ex Angelo Porcelli as I've been told).

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Another take of the Hyacinthoides aristidis, showing how in this genus the first flowers to open are those at the top.

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Allium canariense

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Narcissus dubius

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#24
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 11, 2025, 06:06:33 AM
Hi, @Too Many Plants! , only Northern species... Thanks.
#25
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 10, 2025, 03:05:31 PM
Lovely Aloe @Uli 

I decided to start gathering Mediterranean Romukea as they are the kind of group that I like: dozens of names, often for the same plant but in a different island, or across the border of a country, etc.

Tempskyana seems to be fairly stable and well defined, these deep purple flowers are stunning

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From Episkopí, Cyprus (or the part of Cyprus under British rule).

:
#26
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 10, 2025, 01:12:39 AM
I am definitely in love with Narcissus peroccidentalis:

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And I was surprised to find Hyacinthoides aristidis (not aristidEs) in bloom, as I though that I had swapped them:

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#27
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 07, 2025, 01:54:00 PM
Hi

I finally got one clone/ accession of this Moroccan plant, which is very distinct, byt whose correct name is rather obscure. 

I wasn't thinking of starting a discussion on names so ewarly in the year... but it's me and there's a whole year ahead!


WhatsApp Image 2025-01-07 at 21.16.26.jpg

I got this as Narcissus albidus occidentalis from Imouzzer des Ida Outanane NE of Agadir, in the Antiatlas muntains (Salmon & Fillan 270)  BUT

Narcissus albidus is an illegitimate synonym of N. moschatus; illegitimate because there was an earlier name, N. x albidus, which is in turn a later synonym of N. x incomparabilis (poeticus x pseudonarcissus).

OK, then Kew (POWO) gives  Narcissus albicans (Haw.) Spreng  as the correct name [Corbularia albicans Haworth] BUT

Haworth said that he got this plant from a Dutch seller as "Trompet Marin" or "sea trumpet", and that it was what John Parkinson called in 1625 Pseudonarcissus juncifolius albus. Parkinson said that it grew "in the Pyrenees", and the only similar plant that grows there (in the NW end and adjacent Spanish and French Basque Country) is what is now known as Narcissus bulbocodium subsp citrinus.

So how to call this plant? The Spanish botanist Fernández Casas either knew about the previous names or he just wanted to keep on naming species, and he published Narcissus peroccidentalis in 1996 (tyoe from Col du Kerdous or Kerdous pass, also near Agadir).

So yes, at last, I got real Narcissus peroccidentalis. I will now proceed to compare it with its evident (for me and some more) relative Narcissus grandae from central-SW Spain. 


#28
General Discussion / Re: EU bulb joint order
January 07, 2025, 01:02:51 PM
Great! 

And the catalogue?
#29
Current Photographs / Re: Jan. 2025
January 05, 2025, 02:07:04 AM
Happy new year, Uli, lovely stuff

Is that the unidentified Aloe that we discussed about last year? 
#30
Current Photographs / Re: December 2024
December 31, 2024, 08:22:24 AM
Me again.

 I got permission to post these photos of Dipcadi fulvum at Dar Bouazza, near Casablanca in Morocco, taken by Élias Laraqui. 

There are some wonderful geophytes there, but the area will soon be 'developed'.

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