Mary Sue - let me add my voice to the list of people thanking you for undertaking this project! I've enjoyed it immensely. I see you added a photo of Tritonia drakensbergensis to your latest page, so I want to mention that when I get organized I'm sending a bag of corms of this species to Dell for distribution. I have found it incredibly hardy here, where it forms a large colony and self-sows with ease, possibly too much so. I find that T. disticha, which looks like a larger version of T. drakensbergensis, also establishes and self sows with slightly frightening ease, but it doesn't multiply as much underground. Rhodohypoxis baurii does very well here in the open garden (clayey soil, raised area). The whites are not terribly vigorous, but the pinks have multiplied nicely. It's true: some of the eastern Cape bulbs are surprisingly hardy, at least under our generous snow cover. I believe I've posted lists before, so I won't repeat myself, but other easterners might want to try more of these in their gardens. We have extra snow available here if you need any (still 1-2 feet on the ground, compacted, and our season total is somewhere between 140-175 inches now). Ellen Ellen Hornig Oswego NY 13126 USA USDA zone 5b ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary Sue Ittner" <msittner@mcn.org> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:11 AM Subject: Re: [pbs] Eastern Cape Trip > Hi, > > This is my last post on our Eastern Cape Trip and the last page of Naude's > Nek photos. When I used to think of bulbs from South Africa, I used to > think of the bulb capital of the world at Nieuwoudtville and all the > winter rainfall bulbs. But as my posts have shown there are many summer > rainfall bulbs and some of them grow at high elevations. Ellen Hornig has > found many of them quite hardy although she does have a cover of snow in > winter. > > On the last Naude's Nek page are two Ornithogalums, a white one we > couldn't identify and O. viridiflorum (Galtonia viridiflora). We saw some > of the Oxalis we saw before. I've not been able to identify all of them. > There aren't many Oxalis with umbelliform orange flowers and the one we > saw in several places doesn't quite fit any of the descriptions. According > to Christiaan, O. davyana is a large robust plant, O. semiloba is also a > much bigger plant, and O. stenorrhyncha is supposed to be caulescent and > glabrous and the plants we saw were not. If any of you have any ideas > about the unidentified species please let me know. > > We also saw Rhodohypoxis on Naude's Nek. There are six Rhodohypoxis > species and four of them are Drakensberg Mountain endemics. I've added > descriptions of them from the Pooley Mountain Flowers book to the > Rhodohypoxis wiki page, but I find the distinctions that help you tell > them apart a bit of a challenge. When we made our nightly plant list after > Naude's Nek we were told the species we saw on Naude's Nek was > Rhodohypoxis rubella, but they looked like what I knew as R. baurii. Our > final list had both of them on it. Rhoda was kind enough to send me some > of Cameron's photos of some of the other species which he saw on other > trips and I have added them. I am hoping someone will help me figure out > if what we saw was R. baurii or R. rubella. The flowers are supposed to be > much smaller on the latter and photographs don't really help you figure > out sizes. > > On the summit growing in gravel we saw two Romuleas. Being a Romulea fan, > I was quite excited about this. One of them is now apparently known as R. > camerooniana although some of you may know it or see it in seed lists as > R. campanuloides or R. thodei. One of our photos shows the two species > growing together. > > We saw three more orchids, Satyriums, a Trachyandra, Tulbaghia montana on > the summit, and two Wurmbeas, a very striking one with blotches, Wurmbea > elatior, and a very tiny one growing in a very wet place, W. kraussii. The > spots in the photos of it are water drops. > > This turned out to be a much bigger project than I envisioned when I > thought it would be nice in our cold northern hemisphere months to look at > summer hemisphere flowers, but our pbs wiki didn't have a lot of these > plants included and now it does. > <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…> > > Mary Sue > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/