In my experience Ixias hybridize easily so if you grow a lot of species it may be difficult to identify them to species level. I have a pink one flowering at the moment in a pot where I don't think I've planted and it may be safer just to consider it a hybrid as it is a bit different than pink ones I've grown in the past. I remember John Manning saying that if we aren't careful about isolating species we are probably all growing hybrids. Gordon Summerfield who sells seed and bulbs makes it a practice to hand pollinate and then make sure nothing else can come along afterwards. I don't think anyone has attempted to update the wiki after so many changes to the taxonomy. This always takes hours and hours of study and looking at recent papers which may or may not agree. If you look at the Plants of the World Online listing of species you will see there are a lot to choose from: http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/… In the 1999 monograph on Ixioideae Miriam de Vos and Peter Goldblatt listed four varieties of Ixia polystachya. Now none of them is recognized. Var. longistylis is now considered to be Ixia longistylis. I grow a white Ixia with a blue center (probably from seed exchange seed) that I often wondered whether it was Ixia polystachya or Ixia monadelpha, but decided maybe it was that variety. But it could just be a hybrid. That variety was distinguished from the others by having a style dividing halfway up the anthers. Flowers were mauve or white, with a greenish blue or dark blue center and stamens were suberect, often dark, and it had linear leaves, narrower than leaves of the other varieties. Taxonomy these days doesn't seem to depend so much on what a plant looks like which makes it very challenging for those of us who want to name our plants. Add in that future versions don't always look the same. On my first trip to South Africa I was amazed at the variation in the wild. I realized that my knowledge of a plant often came from a single photo and that species when seen where it was native often looked very different. Since Ashley grows a lot of Ixias, her plant could be a hybrid or maybe a form of Ixia longistylis. I'm attaching photos of my white Ixia with a blue center taken 3 different years: 2008, 2012, 2016. I thought it was Ixia polystachya, but maybe it really is Ixia longistylis or a hybrid of it. As I have spent more time in my garden in the pandemic I have discovered lots of interesting flowers I didn't plant so are probably hybrids. I'll attach a couple Ixias of unknown heritage that recently flowered and that pink one that has appeared in a pot where I didn't plant it. Mary Sue -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_polystachya_2008.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 167907 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_polystachya_2012.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 231234 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_polystachya_white_2016_msi2.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 112382 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_unknown_yellow_2021.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 328363 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_unknown_pink_2021.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 326331 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ixia_hybrid_2021.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 283498 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>
