I've mentioned before that I find identifying the Lachenalia species really challenging from Graham Duncan's book. It has been a nightmare trying to figure out where to put all the previous photos added to the wiki under Lachenalia aloides before his book was published and it went from one species to eight. There are a number of reasons why that is impossible. In the first place he divides them into the dimensions of the inner tepals, three with tepals 14 to 20 mm, and the rest 23 mm or longer. There is no way to determine that from a photo. The other problem with that is when do you measure. Those of us who have grown Lachenalia understand that the dimensions change dramatically as does the color of the tepals over time. There are more measurements needed to distinguish between Lachenalia thunbergii and Lachenalia callista and between Lachenalia aloides and Lachenalia quadricolor. In the category for inner tepals 23 mm or longer in his key he includes "outer tepals not bright red or orange-red" when photos and paintings in his book of those species show what I'd call orange red to red outer tepals, at least for part if not all of their flowering time. If you are dividing something that changes color over time by color when do you decide to make that determination. I asked Arnold to take picture of the plant he received from Croft as Lachenalia callista over time to show the sequence. You can see it here: https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… This is for a species according to the key with outer tepals not bright red or orange-red, inner tepals bright yellow or greenish yellow, inner tepals 32-33 mm long, apices widely spreading Measurements are needed to tell the difference between L. aloides and L. quadricolor. Those two are the ones we puzzle the most over on this list. L. quadricolor has outer tepals shorter (10 to 11 mm) and L. aloides longer (15 to 17 mm). So we probably all need to measure at some unknown time during the flowering. I don't think you can really go by the fact that one might start flowering a few weeks before the other since the flowering period in long enough to include both and besides for those of us growing plants outside of where they are found in nature when they start to flower depends on our conditions and also the origin of the seed. L. quadricolor has inner tepals that are slightly flared and deep purple magenta and L. aloides inner tepals with broad red or purplish red apices with white margins. Remembering when we discussed our favorite bulbs by color, color is viewed very subjectively. What is the difference between purple magenta and purplish red? If you look at iNaturalist for L. aloides you will see photos all over the spectrum and the white margins hard to see. Having said all this I have spent far too long trying to figure this out and add a page to the wiki like Mike Mace did for Moraea tripetala when it was split up. I've put it off for years. His book was published in 2012 and I guess I was hoping some of the changes would never be accepted. Creating this page has made my head spin. Here is my attempt and it is entirely possible that some of the photos I have added to represent the different species could be wrong. https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… As long as I am mentioning my struggles with this and how we all view color, I find L. vanzyliae to be turquoise and that actually makes it really easy to distinguish. This is how the key describes it: Inner tepals translucent white; median keels bright green, broad above Mary Sue _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>