PBS Forum

I forgot to add that Albuca viscosa is incredibly variable as regards foliage.
Within a three kilometre radius of my house I have:
1) Across the road in gravelly sand a tall form with 25-30cm tall olive green very conspicuously glandular succulent foliage.
2) About 130m above my house on an ancient wave-cut platform in seasonally wet fine-grained sand (with Wurmbea hiemalis) is a tiny form 5-7cm tall very fine dark green barely conspicuously glandular wiry foliage - coiled laterally i.e. not erect like a corkscrew but coiled up on itself. Some plants have wavy foliage and the two variants do not grow together - they occur as meta populations in the same habitat.
3) About three km's ESE of my house in the ecotone between recent (100's of 1000's of years old) marine sands and quartzitic sand derived from the bedrock sandstone of the Table Mountain Group there's an intermediate size form - 10-15cm tall dark green succulent foliage also tightly coiled laterally and also barely conspicuously glandular.
The tiny form is particularly attractive. I have only seen the large form in flower as I only discovered the other populations recently post-fire. I will update with pictures in due course.

All taxa with six fertile stamens and spreading tepals were previously included in Ornithogalum. Albuca has been amplified to include all taxa previously included in Ornithogalum that have a green median stripe on the tepals.
Albuca spiralis has six stamens but the outer three are sterile. Albuca viscosa has six stamens with the outer three smaller.
So six stamens = A. viscosa. Neither A. spiralis nor A. viscosa have erect flowers. I don't bother to even dissect the flowers - I just check the foliage - clasping below = spiralis.

I was unsure if I wanted it in my garden or not, and now I'm even more unsure about it But here a Scadoxus Multiflorus. All the others I've seen around had the leaves out at the momento of blooming, but it's a bit late after all so who knows?

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?

The South African Co. order has arrived at Bridget's place safely after a long journey.

All the bulbs look in good shape.

We will accept payments prior to bulbs being shipped from her.

I will be emailing members who have participated in the order with amounts to be paid.

These amounts will include

Price of bulbs
Shipping via DHL from SA to Atlanta where the APHIS station is located
APHIS in Atlanta  to Bridget via UPS
Duty on bulb importation
Phyto documentation

Once payment is made bulbs will be posted to members.

A slip will be included with the cost of the postage from Bridget to the member.

We have prorated the additional costs based on the value of each members order.

Bulb will not be mailed until payment is received.

 

This reminds me that when I have received emails with a subject line being the taxonomic name of one of the many plants with the species epithet formed from the Latin adjective for 'black' (niger nigra, nigrum), the message gets tagged with a red chili pepper, signifying offensive content. Earthlink apparently believes it's a message from a nasty racist who can't spell either.

Last year both of my large B. josephinae developed a pronounced curve in their inflorescence stalks.  One is in the front garden and one in the rear.  The front one is pictured. Why they did this is a mystery to me.  Has anyone else experienced this?  The one in back grew nearly horizontal to the ground after emerging.

Jim
Santa Barbara

My Boophone haemanthoides have suddenly decided to bloom but this bulb has 2 flowering stalks!  This is a first for me.

I presume they are still dormant, if so, you can store them til fall. I've lifted commercial Babiana and they do fine with dry coolish storage, apparently not needing a warm dormancy satisfied. I've also left them in dry soil under cool conditions, and in the ground with moisture and cool conditions...this is San Francisco, after all. They all grow the same in the fall after watering starts. It may be that more exotic species Babiana will be more demanding.

I've had more bulb losses in pots where the soil never dried out or got accidental moisture than storing bare and dry. Indeed, there are plastic sorting trays filled with bulbs sitting on the top shelf near the grow lights getting their warm dormancy satisfied.