Pasithea

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:57:47 PST
Hi all,

I searched for Pasithea on Google and found it spelled both ways. The North 
American Pacific west coast seems to go with Pasithea caerulea but there 
are a lot of people using the other spelling.

Alberto Castillo wrote me privately that Pasithea caerulea is the most 
common spelling in South America at the moment, but Osmani found the other 
spelling. I like Jim McKenney's theory that it was difficult to read the 
writing. I will write a note on the wiki that it seems to be spelled two 
ways. If anyone has access to the original publication and can look it up 
I'd be interested in what you find. We all look forward some day to a 
reference book on South American bulbs.

I just added a picture to the wiki of the roots. Alberto wrote me about the 
separation of Anthericaceae from Liliaceae:
"In Anthericaceae the inflorescence is elongated and different and the 
roots are like in Bulbinella, you know, radial threads connected to 
terminal 'sausages'."

It is interesting to hear Osmani say this plant is found in so many 
different habitats and elevations in Chile. Maybe Jim Waddick could grow 
one from high elevation seed. I saw one in bloom in UC Berkeley after a 
cold spell that had wiped out a lot of South African things, but that still 
wasn't probably as cold as it gets for him. My plants have only a short 
dormancy before they start back in growth and I lost some I kept completely 
dry so my plants grown from seed from Jim Forrest in New Zealand apparently 
did not originate in the desert.

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue


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