Bulbs for Shade

Mark McDonough antennaria@charter.net
Fri, 12 Jul 2013 05:55:49 PDT
> From: aaron floden <aaron_floden@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [pbs] Bulbs for Shade
>
> Is that correctly identified? It looks suspiciously like virginicum 
> which should be flowering now and is too early for latifolium which is 
> not yet in flower here yet in the wild.
> I have smelled parviflorum and woodii as well and they have distinctly 
> putrid marine water smell. Your description of the fragance is much 
> how I would describe for virginicum; cloyingly sweet, but with 
> undertones of urine and cow dung with a tendency to produce mild 
> headaches.


Aaron, you are correct, this is Melanthium virginicum, I came to that 
same conclusion this morning when Harold Peachy (NARGS member) posted a 
photo of his plant to the same NARGS Forum topic:
https://nargs.org/forum/melanthium-bunchflower/

I accepted the name given to me from a good source, without verifying 
the identification, I should know better (lesson learned once again, and 
again)!   ;-)

I really like your description of the scent on virginicum, cloyingly 
sweet, but with undertones of cow dung.  No headaches here so far. I can 
only detect the scent from about 1 meter away; the plant is so beautiful 
that I'm okay with a mild barnyard smell... when the wind blows from the 
northeast I can smell a very nearby cow pasture, not so bad.

Mark McDonough
USDA Zone 5
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USA



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