Prosartes

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Mon, 20 Jun 2016 18:21:21 PDT
Hi,

Prosartes is a genus that was formerly known as Disporum in North 
America (fairybells).  Disporum is retained for species from China and 
on the wiki Prosartes page we had written that Prosartes is now 
considered to justify generic status based on cellular, chemical and 
morphological differences that are not readily visible to the naked eye. 
That definitely makes it harder to tell them apart. I remember when I 
took a wildflower class that telling the two species apart that are 
found in our area, Prosartes hookeri and Prosartes smithii, can be a bit 
challenging. Since most of the ones I see locally are coastal (P. 
smithii) I've not spent a lot of time trying to figure them out.  On a 
recent trip we saw some plants flowering in Oregon and northern 
California and I decided to add some photos to the wiki. I did a bit of 
research to add more information to the wiki page and ended up getting 
very confused as descriptions vary widely in different publications. 
Even the Flora of North America doesn't quite match Jepson. In Jepson 
whether the stamens are included or exserted tells those two species 
apart, but in the Flora of North America Prosartes hookeri is described 
with the stamens either included or exserted. Whether the leaf margins 
are hairy and which direction the hairs point is another identifying 
feature, except that sometimes those margins are hairy and sometimes not 
for the same species. Looking at photos on the Internet of different 
species also isn't very helpful as many of the photos of different 
species look alike and the photographers could have understandably 
misidentified them. And I discovered another species that is native to 
Oregon (P. trachycarpa) that in photos looks like P. hookeri, but has 
distinctive berries. The ones we saw were in flower so that didn't help. 
I finally decided I was spending too much time on it and added photos as 
P. smithii since it was coastal and the stamens were included and as P. 
hookeri for the California species since P. trachycarpa isn't found in 
California (although the spot we saw the plants was near the border) and 
for the other Oregon species since it is listed as found in Washington 
Park, Portland, where we saw it. There are a number of other North 
American species that we do not have photos of. If any of you have 
photos of them and are willing to add them to the wiki, feel free to 
send them to me and I will add them for you.

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



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