mystery bulb

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 11:17:07 PST
I just added a photo for Kathleen Sayce of a plant she'd like help in 
identifying flowering in a pot labeled crinum, which died. She describes 
it as having lovely cool pink flowers on long drooping stems and 
grass-like leaves. I think it looks like an Ixia, maybe what was used to 
be known as Ixia rapunculoides which is flowering for me now (well at 
least it has tried to flower in spite of the constant rain we've had 
until recently.)

In 2008 Goldblatt and Manning studied that species and split it up to  
I. flaccida with small, short-tubed white- or pale blue-flushed flowers, 
soft-textured leaves and corms with basal cormlets from the Olifants 
River Valley and nearby;  I. sobolifera from the Western and Little 
Karoo, which has linear leaves, nodding spikes and flowers and corms 
with stolons (3 subspecies); I. oxalidiflora with  fully included 
anthers, a longer perianth tube,  16-20 mm, and ascending purple-pink 
flowers with a white cup;  and I. lacerata from the Klein Roggeveld with 
a longer perianth tube, 10-14 mm long, and attenuate, slightly lacerate, 
5-veined, dry, rust-tipped bracts. I. rapunculoides var. namaquana 
(L.Bolus) G.J.Lewis, defined by a longer perianth tube, mostly 13-16 mm 
long, horizontally oriented, white, pale lilac or pink flowers and 
few-flowered lateral branchlets was treated as I. namaquana.  Two more 
varieties, I. rapunculoides var. subpendula G.J.Lewis and var. rigida 
sensu G.J.Lewis, which have upright flowers and distinctively branched 
stems  were treated as I. divaricata and I. contorta.  Plants from 
streambeds in the Roggeveld that have large, white flowers, were 
described as  I. rivulicola.  I. rapunculoides var. robusta G.J.Lewis 
with  pink flowers, but four or five leaves and deep-seated corms with a 
collar of coarse fibres around the stem base was raised to I. robusta.

I extracted that from the paper but if you want to read it:

http://abcjournal.org/index.php/ABC/…

As is often the case there were no volunteers working on the wiki who 
either had the time or the inclination to figure out what to do with the 
photos we had of I. rapuculoides and to add all these new species. But 
because of this splitting it may be a challenge to identify what she has.

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





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