Mystery Romulea

Robin Attrill robin@rpattrill.freeserve.co.uk
Sat, 21 Feb 2004 14:08:55 PST
Mary Sue,

The large dark violet-flowered european Romuleas tend to be listed as R.
bulbocodium variants - the 'Knightshayes' form is an example - but I'm not
sure if this is where they truly belong.  Many of the dark flowered palnts
in cultivation have short styles. The taxonomy is a mess! I am not aware of
a truly comprehensive key - the listings in Flora Europaea do not include
all the north African and middle-eastern taxa and are consequently of
limited use unless one is sure the plant is of european provenance.  This
overall situation results in names often being assigned in a somewhat
arbitrary fashion, hence the names on packets of seed from exchanges etc
should be viewed with circumspect.

The plant illustrated from Tony Goode looks like R. columnae to me, although
I have no experience with R. rollii.

regards

Robin






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