PBS Forum

Wikipedia and Kew list the 5 species to be:

• Paramongaia milagroantha (S.Leiva & Meerow) Meerow
• Paramongaia mirabile (Ravenna) Meerow
• Paramongaia multiflora Meerow
• Paramongaia viridiflora (Ruiz & Pav.) Meerow
• Paramongaia weberbaueri Velarde

Some of these are red, including one that is a bright tomato red.

So the new species of Paramongaia that Meerow published is P. multiflora, which is a smaller flower and grows in multiple flowers per scape and is a more greenish-yellow in color. This is the article reference, but I don't have access to this journal: <https://www.biotaxa.org/Phytotaxa/article/view/phytotaxa.416.2.6>. In the article they also move 3 Clinanthus species to Paramongaia based on DNA sequencing. So there are 5 Paramongaia species now. The article where he argues to conserve the Paramongaia genus name is here: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tax.12141>. There is another species from the higher altitude Andes that hasn't been published yet that Dr. Meerow thinks might be yet another species of Paramongaia.

I have seen photos on Facebook from people living in Bolivia of native Paramongaia flowering, presumably P. superba. Alan Meerow has commented to them, pretty much insisting, that they are merely P. weberbaueri. They looked fairly identical to me. Dr. Meerow has been pretty much the expert on the whole genus, publishing one or two new Paramongaia species in the past few years, and publishing a defense to preserve the genus name since it is sister to Clinanthus.

As for the winter vs summer clone, I also have heard stories from various people that the "summer" clone reverts to winter growing after a few seasons. This may have happened to me too. However, I now have an example of a clone, which is sourced to New Zealand, that I was told was winter growing, like my others, that over the space of two additional seasons "reverted" to summer growing. And given that I grow all my Paramongaia in the same soil mixture, pots, and climate, it is surprising to me to see the "summer" clone, which has multiplied and is in two pots, dying down and going dormant at the same time that the winter clones have already started growing this year. I also saw the same in reverse late last spring. The summer clone grew very healthily all summer long, getting watered along with all my other summer growing plants, and sitting out in full sun with moist soil through the hottest days here in inland Southern California. The leaves starting turning yellow on their own when the days got shorter and the nights got cooler. Furthermore, I learned through a sad accident that the winter clones do not like being watered in the summer heat. Some years ago, I had a 1 gal pot with a single bulb in it that accidentally got left out hiding in the middle of a bunch of my summer growing pots that were watered automatically. By the time I discovered it in late summer, the bulb had rotted.

So basically, I can't tell you what the final answer is. But for the moment I have pots of both that most decidedly seem to want to grow during opposite halves of the year.

What is interesting to me is that all of the native growing clumps of Paramongaia I've seen photos of on Facebook are all at higher altitudes in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. I have yet to see any photos of native Paramongaia growing in the much lower coastal hills of Peru. (Although I've seen many photos of Ismene amancaes, another bright yellow amaryllid, growing all over various protected hillsides of the coastal hills of Peru.)

This is what they said about their subgenus decision:

QuoteA division into subgenera would be informative regarding relationships within each genus, notwithstanding that this subgeneric classification is open to further considerations as their phylogenetic structures are better resolved.

The refinement of the subgeneric taxonomy, however, would not require additional changes in species names (as subgeneric names are not part of the binomial).

Therefore, this scheme is likely to lead to more robust nomenclatural stability in this traditionally contentious group.

And here is a spreadsheet I started to put together of some of the species and how they're related and how their names have been changed based on that paper and subsequent correction paper. 

(BTW, I'm, not a big fan of the amount of "lumping" they did. I thought it was a cop-out compromise they made to specify a bunch of IMO very different subgenera instead of genera. Their excuse was that by only specifying them as subgenera, since the scientific name is only the genus and species names, and not the subgenus names, they won't have to change anything as the DNA sequencing and the tree it produces becomes more refined and subsequent rearrangements of some of the branches or subgroups occur.)

I wouldn't compare Rhodophiala bifida with all the other Rhodophialas. The main reason being that R. bifida is native to Argentina which has summer rainfall/drier winter pattern while all the other Rhodophialas are native to Chile which has a pronounced winter rainfall/very dry summer pattern--even though R. bifida grows during the winter and is dormant during the summer. It doesn't mind summer rains, while the Chilean Rhodophialas, depending on how far north they come from in Chile, may be killed by summer watering/rain.

However, the paper that has turned many of the these genera into merely Hippeastrum or Zephyranthes, also gave a DNA-sequenced tree of many of the species. And it was clear that definite subgenus groupings exist. To the point that the paper actually discusses whether to lump them all together into just two genuses or to give them all different genus names. So they compromised by defining subgenus names and listing all the species they sequenced that belonged in their respective subgenus.

What is interesting are a few species that formerly were placed in some of the other genera now belonging to completely different subgenera along with species that we didn't know they were sister species of.

In any case, in this overall tribe, the thing to pay attention to, in my opinion, are the subgenera. So it turns out that R. bifida is its own Zephyranthes subgenus, Neorhodophiala. Most of what used to be Chilean Rhodophialas are now Zephyranthes subgenus Myostemma (which also used to be a synonym genus name for the Chilean Rhodophialas). And a few of the Rhodophialas are not related to Zephyranthes at all, but instead to the Placeas and Phycellas.

Here is a cladogram from the DNA sequencing of the various groupings among these related species.

Quote from: David Pilling on June 13, 2023, 04:09:59 AMAn interesting thing is that when you see yellow you might be looking at a pure yellow light, a light of a single frequency or two lights combined at the frequencies of red and green.

This is very true. And apparently pure spectral yellow and yellow made from red and green are indistinguishable to humans, but don't look anything alike to flies. I learned that if you want to use the low-tech solution to get rid of flies of using flypaper, you have to be sure that the flypaper color is single frequency yellow rather than a combination of other frequencies. Because flies will not be attracted to non-single frequency yellow flypaper.

There have been many discussions that point out that vinyl stakes (including label stakes made from old mini-blinds) last much longer than the cheaper polystyrene stakes.

That being said, even the vinyl stakes will eventually start to form cracks if out in the sun long enough (years). So in my experience, the two longest lasting methods, using vinyl stakes (unless you want to go a much more expensive route and use metal labels that have the text embossed or engraved on them), are to either use extra fine tip oil-based paint pens (not acrylic or xylene) because no permanent marker of any strength resists eventually fading in sunlight, or make labels with a label maker using black on clear tape and then covering the vinyl stake with the label.

For some reason I don't quite know, the label maker label on vinyl stakes is the superior method. The text never fades, and the adhesive somehow lasts decades such that even when the vinyl finally starts to crack, the clear label still holds the stake together. I have a couple of pots that have some bulbs I received from two different people back in the late '90s that still have the original labelled stakes that came with them. Both are label maker labels stuck on white vinyl stakes that have actually cracked, but are still held together by the label which has not faded in the slightest, still solid black text.

Black oil-based paint marker doesn't fade either, but the vinyl eventually becomes brittle enough to break easily after about 15-20 years. I have a few really old vinyl labels that were probably 4 times as thick as normal that don't bend, and they're still whole.

Maybe using a paint pen on a thin flat rock might outlast anything else, since one of the things some people use paint pens for is to paint rocks.

I've also just started using a medium-point oil-based white paint pen to write on the outside of the pot itself to see if that lasts a long time. I originally got those white wax pencils that some nurseries use to write on the outside of their pots. But discovered that there are creatures out there that eat the white wax. They're very nice to write with, and don't fade. But I started noticing that little pieces of the letters started to randomly disappear over time--until the words became illegible. There was no smearing or fading. So now I'm trying the paint pen method.

One of the things I started reading early on in my plant hobbyism was that some plants had varieties with flowers from "almost" the entire spectrum or rainbow of colors. Then after stating that they'd continue to mention the one (or more) colors that were missing. One of the famous ones is the rose. And the color most often mentioned as missing was always blue. And some would mention the closest to blue that had been produced but that were really a kind of purple or lavender or mauve. I think even the Japanese tried to create a "true blue" rose by genetic manipulation, by inserting genes from some other flower that really did come in a true blue color (like delphinium I think). What they ended up with was yet another lavender rose, although a very different shade of lavender than the traditionally bred ones. Apparently there was a problem with the acidity of rose petals that altered the color of the blue genes they'd introduced. They also tried it with carnations, probably because most people weren't fooled by the "blue" carnations produced by putting white carnations in solutions of blue dye. In that case the Japanese produced some beautiful lavender and purple carnations, a color I don't think existed for traditionally bred carnations. (Google the "Moonseries" carnations.) Another genus, and much more geophyte related are Irises. And indeed, I think the word Iris means "rainbow" in Greek.

But I think when those are mentioned, many people leave out parts of the spectrum, or rather "color wheel", that humans can see and recognize, but are sometimes skipped or ignored, I'm not sure why. So I'm just going to review the basics of the color spectrum or "wheel", so that I can then post my claim as to the species that has flowers that cover the full spectrum most completely. (And it happens to be a geophyte! ) So the three primary colors of projected light, think a color flatscreen TV or computer monitor, are red, green, and blue. And from those three when used in various mixtures and relative intensities, they derive all the other colors we can see. The three "secondary" colors, which are sometimes called the three reflected primaries, think color prints made by color laser printers or printing presses which, if you have one, you know have three color toner cartridges, yellow, cyan, and magenta. Using those three, used in various mixtures and relative intensities, they can likewise derive all the other colors we can see. Even more interestingly, if you are using the light primaries, mixing equal intensities of red and green produces yellow light, green and blue produces cyan (or "teal") light, and blue and red produces magenta light. Which are the three reflective primaries. While mixing equal amounts of yellow and cyan/teal toner produces a green color, cyan/teal and magenta toner produces a true blue color, and magenta and yellow toner produces a real red color, which are the three light or projective primaries.

[Side note: color laser printers usually have at least 4 different toner cartridges, the 4th one being black (leading to the acronym CMYK, where the K is for black). The reason being that technically, mixing equal amounts of yellow, cyan, and magenta should give black, but it is usually a vary dark muddy brown. Plus, black toner is much cheaper than color toner and it uses ⅓ as much toner since you only use one unit of black instead of 3 units of each of the 3 more expensive toners. The analog of mixing the three reflective primaries to produce black is that when you mix the three light, or projective, primaries of red, green, and blue in equal amounts or intensities, you get white. Which is how it is done on TVs and monitors. You only ever have RGB, not RGBW.]

And before I get to my nominee species, I want to throw out just a few more colors, and I don't know what to call these. But they seem to be colors that are neither primary nor secondary, but that many humans seem to think of as their own independent color. For example orange. Many people do not see "true" orange as either a shade of yellow or red, or even yellowish-red, or reddish-yellow, but as "just" orange. Same with purple or violet. It's not a shade of blue or red or even magenta. And speaking of magenta, I'm going to include pink in with magenta as a less intense or maybe slightly lighter magenta. It's not "light red". (Try making "light red" with your computer by selecting red, then reducing the intensity of it. You don't get pink.) And finally, an odd one that isn't on the edge of the color wheel, which is brown, as in chocolate brown. It's basically a darkened red-orange-yellow, depending on what shade of brown you're talking about, but "chocolate" brown seems to be the standard brownest brown.

[One more side note: The rainbow or the spectrum does not contain all the colors the human brain recognizes or interprets as different colors. On the scientific standard for color, the "spectral colors" form a somewhat odd-shaped curved arch, from red through orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue. Then they connect a straight line from one end of the curved arch to the other and call this the "line of purples". It contains the purples/violets and magenta shades. It's interesting because you can't produce these colors in people's brains using just one frequency of light--as you can with all the other colors along the "spectral" color curve. You have to use at least two different frequencies of light in different relative intensities to get the purples and magentas, even though the mind interprets it as a single color. This is why you will never see purple or lavender or magenta in a rainbow.]

Okay, and now to get to my nominee. Roses and carnations don't come in blues or teals, and true green roses I think are very rare and maybe there is only one species rose that comes in that color. Irises, in particular tall bearded types also don't come in teals or true greens, and a true red is still not there I think (although other Iris types have true red I think). Roses and irises do come in white, but not yet true black, although there are really dark purple-black irises, and dark red-black roses. There are certainly magenta and pink roses, but although there are pink irises, I don't think I've ever seen a magenta tall bearded iris. Irises win over roses for blue ones, even if not quite as intense and true blue as gentians or Tecophilaea. There are some fairly chocolatey brown irises, and some more muddy looking brownish roses. And of course teal flowers are incredibly rare, rarer than green flowers IMO. The ones I know about are two geophytes, Ixia viridiflora and Lachenalia viridiflora; two Puyas, P. alpestris and P. × berteroniana; "Jade Vine", Strongylodon macrobotrys; Ecbolium viride; and maybe one or two others I can't think of right now.

So for the most complete spectrum of flower colors, I nominate Anigozanthos or kangaroo paws, ever since they bred the teal-to-blue colored 'Masquerade' variety--which I've now seen in person, and a very nice member of PBS saw for sale up in the San Francisco Bay Area and sent me some. Yes, they have now been imported into the United States, it appears. And they really are the color you see in the photos. I think kangaroo paws may include every major color around the entire spectrum now. Meaning, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, magenta/pink, and also white and black, (and may some not quite chocolatey browns). Here are some links to photos out there on the web. See if you agree.

red: <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ISfJMmfys48/XNzV0ez1QbI/AAAAAAABnzI/QlY4iEW3LPcVwwh3NVhtMvUgYt2RXhKfwCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC07905.JPG>
scarlet red: <https://www.gardeningwithangus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/anigozanthos_kangaroo-paw_landscape-scarlet-1.jpg>
orange: <https://www.ranchotissue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AnigozanthosTequilaSunrise1.jpg>
yellow: <https://www.gardeningwithangus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/anigozanthos-flavidus-x-pulcheremis_kangaroo-paw_yellow-gem-1.jpg>
yellow-green: <https://www.ramm.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Aussie-Spirit-1.jpg>
green: <https://www.gardeningwithangus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/anigozanthos-viridis_kangaroo-paw-2.jpg>
teal: <https://www.thejunglecollective.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Anigozanthos-Celebrations-Masquerade-Friends-of-Kings-Park-s.jpg>
blue: <https://thursd.com/storage/media/42427/Blue-Anigozanthus-on-Thursd-.jpg>
deeper blue ("true blue"?): <https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/281957091_10159664665337707_9178472396774143961_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dbeb18&_nc_ohc=MbKNLQQjzL4AX_Zqcmd&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-2.xx&oh=00_AfC8kql4TZa7yka77VTLzvGsvvNjqPMqX0E-Lgb0l90jCw&oe=648D2EBA>
purple: <https://nativeplantproject.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/anigozanthos-celebrations-'carnivale-pbr-1-568x764.jpeg>
magenta/pink: <https://www.benaranurseries.com/media/catalog/product/cache/29075eb501be649b1cefe83d67182d6c/w/e/website_anibusgempea5.jpg>
white: <https://gardenworld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/kangaroo-paw-white.jpg>
black: <https://www.nurseriesonline.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Black-Kangaroo-Paw-flower.jpg>
brownish (a pure species): <https://www.gardeningwithangus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/anigozanthos-kalbarriensis_cats-paw-1.jpg>
yellowish-reddish-brown?: <https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0634/0997/9621/products/Anigozanthos_695x695.jpg?v=1682341244>

There are some things ChatGPT and Bard are good at and some things where it's so bad that it "hallucinates", which is the term they're now using for when AI makes up a perfectly reasonable sounding article with several accurate sounding references, but all the facts are false. ChatGPT actually happens to be very good at constructing computer code just by telling it in English what you want the code to do. However, you need to know how code works yourself to change the code where it needs changing so it will do what you really want it to do. However, it will set up all the variables, structure, use commands from the computer language correctly, and even knows what libraries to import, including ones you didn't know existed that do exactly what you wanted.

However, I once tried to see if it could find more information on a bulb species that I had only found a couple of things about using Google extensively. It turned out to be worse than my using Google myself. I told it to tell me about Cearanthes fuscoviolacea which is an amaryllid from Brazil. It told me all about a purple flowered orchid from Central America. I repeated my request but inserted the words "the bulb" between "about" and "Cearanthes". And it responded that *I* was mistaken that it was a bulb because it is not; it is an orchid. From Central America. 

The only things it got right were that they both had purple flowers and they were both plants.

Hi Uli,

I think what you're referring to are called "multiflora" hyacinths here in the States. There is a blue, pink, and white one in the trade. I've read that they are not the "Roman" hyacinths and may not return in our sunbelt states, whereas the "Roman" type are heirloom varieties that have been grown in the South for many decades (maybe even for more than 100 years?). I'm pretty sure they're the same species, but genetically they seem to be adapted to climates without much winter chill and do not require freezing temperatures to flower. I know they are grown in southern Europe as well. Back when Bulb 'Argence was in business they used to offer the blue and the white one. (Just checked and their website is still up, but they don't sell much at all anymore. <https://www.bulbargence.com/m_catalogue/index.php?id_categorie=109>) 

Have you tried Tecophilaea yet? They are stunning when they fill a pot with flowers. I haven't tried them in the ground, but if you have a place where it is dry in summer and not too sunny then, they should do well. (They don't seem to mind hot temperatures in the summer if they are in the shade. Last September we had a week where the high temperature was between 40°-45°C with lows between 21°-26°C every day for the entire week!) They do need sun in winter, though.

This is my attempt at trying to get more colors into Hyacinths that grow in warmer climates. I don't really care for the big fat flower scapes. I like the colors and the scent. So I have various selections from the trade mixed in with pots of blue, white, and pink "Roman" hyacinths which grow fine in sunbelt climates, hoping the bees will cross pollinate. Before the current rains we're getting, I saw a lot of bees busy doing their thing among them, so maybe it will work?

A couple of my Paramongaia weberbaueri have also bloomed. They really do look like daffodils on steroids, and have a really nice scent. They grow well here, at least the winter flowering strain, but the leaves do not like actual 32°F/0°C temperatures.

Tecophilaea cyanocrocus

. All three of the main varieties found in the trade. vars cyanocrocus, leichtlinii, and violacea. I don't understand why they are so expensive. They're very easy to grow in my climate and multiply without any problem whatsoever. I grow them almost identically to how I grow my Cape bulbs, same soil mix, same dormancy treatment, same emergence time in early winter, same watering regime. (This winter I haven't had to water them at all due to all the rain we've been having.) The only pest I've found they have is mice, during dormancy. So I keep them shaded but in full view of cats and humans. I think var. leichtlinii is the actual type species because they are more vigorous in almost every way (growth, flowering, multiplication, etc.).

Another method, which I did at the time, is to go scoop up a good sized bag of ash right after a big forest fire. I did this as soon as they let us go back into the Angeles National Forest after the 'Station' fire finally burned out in the foothills and mountains behind Pasadena and Glendale back in 2009. I didn't try any scientific method with and without. I just put ash on top of all my seeds I planted that fall from mediterranean climate regions, since I had plenty of it, and as some have pointed out, it is full of plant nutrients anyway.