The most recent attachments from Shmuel Silinsky and Ottoline Clapham illustrate the challenge that all of us have since Graham Duncan decided to divide Lachenalia aloides (syn. Lachenalia tricolor) into eight species: Lachenalia aloides, Lachenalia callista, Lachenalia flava (syn. Lachenalia aurea), Lachenalia luteola , Lachenalia patentissima, Lachenalia quadricolor, Lachenalia thunbergii and Lachenalia vanzyliae Many sources are probably going by old names and the distinctions between the the species are often not very clear from my perspective. Add to that how different the plants look at different stages. I've decided that I probably have a lot of L. quadricolor even though some plants flowered first in January and some are just now coming into flower. I'm attaching three photos of the one starting to flower in January at different stages to show my point. A number of years ago Mike Mace did a wonderful wiki page to help figure out what was called the Moraea tripetala complex when that species was divided into 9 species and 3 varieties. https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… This probably needs to be done for Lachenalia aloides. I started writing down the differences, but it was a frustrating project as Graham's book didn't make it easy if you looked at his descriptions, paintings, and photographs and I never finished. Looking at his key makes it a little easier so maybe one of these days I'll work on making a wiki page with the differences. The challenge is that most of the photos were added to the wiki when they were all L. aloides and you can't measure the size of inner and outer tepals in a photo so that makes it hard to choose photos to illustrate the different species. L. patentissima has one leaf, a widely spreading perianth, bright yellow outer tepals. All the others have two leaves. L. vanzyliae is easy as it has translucent white inner tepals and bright green median keels (some of us would call it turquoise). So that leaves six. L. luteola has inner tepals 14-20 mm, that are greenish yellow to bright yellow, or reddish orange above The rest have inner tepals 23 mm or longer and bright yellow or greenish yellow inner tepals L. flava has a purple scape, golden yellow or orange inner tepals (the description of this species also says the scape can be light green with purple blotches) The last four have a green, plain or with brownish purple blotches scape. For them you have to measure (note-depending on when you measure, the measurements could be different): L. aloides - outer tepals 15 to 17 mm long, apices red or purplish red L. quadricolor - outer tepals 10-11 mm long, apices purplish magenta (note-the difference between purplish red and magenta might be a subjective call) L. callista inner tepals 32-33 mm long, apices widely spreading L. thunbergii- inner tepals 23-24 mm long, apices slightly spreading Hopefully this will help you figure out what you have. It looks like the scape in one of Shumuel's photos is purple, but the description of flava is of more uniformly colored flowers than his flowers are and the ones I've grown that I think are that species are all the same color as are the ones illustrated in the book. Depending on the source of plants, all of us could be growing hybrids. Lumpers may wish to call the ones that can't be figured out Lachenalia aloides complex. Mary Sue -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Lachenalia_quadricolor_2021b.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 200803 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Lachenalia_quadricolor_2021c.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 321283 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Lachenalia-quadricolor-late_2021.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 320411 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>
