Ornithogaloideae Monograph

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:33:02 PDT
Alberto Castillo wrote,
>
>But, it will impossible for someone not inhabiting a botany library 
>to remember all the synonimy as species are walked around. The 
>recent Albuca to Ornithogalum and back to Albuca is an example.

The Royal Botanical Gardens Kew website has pretty good lists of 
synonymy. I recently used it to track down the "real" name of the 
plant I grew from seed called "Camassia biflora," which is a pretty 
old synonym for what is now, apparently, to be called Oziroe biflora. 
It had been in Fortunatia in the interim, and I did know the genus 
Fortunatia from seeing it in the wild, but did not make the 
connection without documentation. And no, it's not an ornamental 
wonder -- just a BIO (Botanical Interest Only).

You can find a number of other synonymies online once you learn to 
avoid the websites that are programmed to pop up on a search on any 
botanical name but have no real information on them. I did a great 
deal of this searching when preparing the cumulative index of the 
NARGS journal a couple of years ago (it's now on http://www.nargs.org/ but 
will not include many of the bulbs, especially warm-climate ones, 
that PBS members are interested in).

Jane McGary,
Portland, OR





More information about the pbs mailing list