European Romuleas

Arthur Dawson adawson1@san.rr.com
Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:57:34 PST
I have to inject a word of caution about this species if you live in
Southern California. In 1992 I obtained bulbs under the name of Romulea
romiflora. They propagated mightily and soon proved to be very invasive.
It was probably a 3-year project to eliminate the last of them from
neighbouring containers and even from the vegetable beds. Perhaps the
plant was misidentified but I don't believe it was the recognized
invasive, R. rosea, which I have also grown. I have one photo of the
plant, taken in the pre-digital era, which I attach, but I am not sure
that it is not the well-behaved R. grandiscarpa.

AD

On Mar/08/11 08:46 , "Mary Sue Ittner" <msittner@mcn.org> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>One of the wonderful thing about having a bulb list with
>knowledgeable people around the world is that we have many people who
>can help us identify the plants we grow from seed. Angelo Porcelli
>supplied me with information allowing me to correct the species name
>of some Romulea plants that a number of us have been growing as aff.
>bulbocodium even though  the description of that species has a stigma
>overtopping the stamens and in these plants the stigma and the
>stamens are the same height.
>
>Angelo says these plants are instead Romulea ramiflora which has a
>rather wide distribution in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and
>Greece. Since one of the photos on the wiki showed the back of the
>tepals and the bracts (often an important identification feature of
>Romulea species)  and since he has the key (in Italian that he can
>read) he can confirm what they are. This illustrates the importance
>mentioned in recent posts of having photos on the wiki that show
>distinctive characteristics (not just a close-up of the flowers).
>
>This is an easy plant to grow and I am very fond of it and I'm sure
>I've probably given seed and corms to the BX with the wrong name. So
>if you have received Romulea bulbocodium corms or seed from me from
>the BX, please go to the wiki page and figure out whether what you
>have is the real species or Romulea ramiflora instead.
><http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
>eanRomuleas>
>
>Mary Sue
>
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