More Gladiolus

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 04 Mar 2007 08:23:07 PST
Hi,

I've finished 
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Besides the new Gladiolus papilio that Roy Herbert added yesterday, there 
is a new picture of Gladiolus orchidiflorus taken in Namaqualand. This is a 
fragrant very intricate one that makes you appreciate beige nicely marked 
flowers. Jim Robinett gave me one before he died and it flowered for me 
once. No doubt it was not happy in my wetter winters.

New species from Cameron seen in habitat are Gladiolus permeabilis, 
Gladiolus rudis, and Gladiolus subcaeruleus and there is another picture 
added of Gladiolus priorii that I think was taken in his nursery. We had it 
pictured already, but I really liked his picture with the blue sky and 
clouds behind the red flowers.

Two more new habitat species added we saw in South Africa on our trip. The 
first is Gladiolus speciosus seen in the western Cape near Darling in 
September. This is another one of the Gladiolus alatus group, but is 
strongly marked yellow on the back. And I think in my post yesterday I 
mixed it up with the other one we saw that day. This is the one I think we 
saw in the Babiana ringens habitat. I think we saw G. meliusculus earlier 
in the day. The second one from our pictures is Gladiolus scullyi. This is 
similar to Gladiolus venustus but G. venustus is found in more southern 
areas of the winter rainfall area. G. scullyi is also fragrant and there 
are other differences although in the overlapping areas the forms are 
sometimes hard to tell apart. I think these I added are all G. scullyi. 
South African members of our group should speak up if I got them wrong so I 
can correct them.

Since there are 163 different species (and more added all the time) in 
Southern Africa we are a long way from picturing them all.  And I still 
have one more page to add some new species to.

Jim, I think and this is definitely not more than a guess since South 
Africa has a lot of daisies and I haven't tried to figure out how they are 
different, that the daisy you asked about in the G. meliuculus picture 
might have been an Arctotis instead of Ursinia. Once again someone else can 
confirm. South Africa has the most amazing bulbs. I doubt you'll ever leave 
Maryland and your wonderful garden, but some day you might want to visit. 
There could be some of these Glads you could grow in your cold frame. They 
aren't all tall. Maybe some of the latter blooming ones would work or some 
from the summer rainfall areas.

Mary Sue



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