Hyacinthus orientalis wild form

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sat, 10 Apr 2004 07:44:11 PDT
Dear All,

The picture of Lauw's Hyacinthus orientalis 'Villa Petraya' makes it look 
quite nice. The color is much better than mine which is a light purple. It 
is disappointing to read that this is one of the bulbs currently missing 
from Lauw's inventory. It sounds like Jim Waddick can grow the cultivars 
just fine in his colder garden, but people are suggesting the wild form for 
warmer gardens. Has anyone tested the hardiness?

While I was looking on Lauw's web page I checked out what pictures he had 
for Bellevalia, our topic of the week and he has a picture of Bellevalia 
romana (the "good doer"), the one I didn't get a picture for our wiki. 
Under the description he has called it a "Roman Hyacinth" which is what 
Cynthia Mueller talked about growing in Texas. I asked her what she thought 
the botanical name was for her plants and she suggested it could be 
Hyacinthus orientalis var. albulus. I searched in the IPNI list and there 
isn't any listing for this. There is a listing for H. orientalis however. 
There are two published listing for Hyacinthus romanus however. One equals 
dubius so perhaps that listing was for what is now known as Bellevalia 
dubia. There is another one for Hyacinthus romanus however which would be a 
logical botanical name for Roman Hyacinths. So if this plant is now known 
as Bellevalia romana it sounds like we have two different plants that are 
called Roman Hyacinths.

Mary Sue
Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers


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