A delight to the eye Evan, Im happy you were able to capture photos of this little group of endangered beauties, although i prefer the pastel blue Geissorhizas myself. I wish i could have seen them all in flower too, I bet the fluorescence is amazing compared to the photos. Thank you for your earlier response, i too am pleased there is collection limits. Although i still think all collection is high risk, unless used for regeneration purposes. Rather than added to the Halls of Extinction, and dig areas are carefully manicured to mask the removal process. You might find this interesting for your research, in regard to removal. I visit rare Crinum venosum colonies in Queensland Australia annually, most of these plants are unlucky because most live on cattle & horse properties, rather than in the wild, which has mostly been cleared by greedy governments & land holders. I have observed in recent years, where even small numbers of plants have been removed for study or by poachers stealing them, the small pockets of ground disturbance has led to cattle digging away the gully edges where the plants favor, due to cattle loving to dig fresh exposed earth. What starts as shallow dig holes as round as a bucket, ends up large exposed wallows where grass cover cant re-establish quickly. C. venosum have been able to survive the ages in low numbers, but even small amounts of removal is now greatly increasing rapid extinction of the most important colony. But ill make detailed posts on my research over the last few years on another day. Your Geissorhiza photo collection is excellent, & i never realized how close babiana can be to Geissorhiza, although the differences are many when we look closely. Its easy to see they have evolved to attract the fly, with a bold red dish of delight in a dazzling ring of blue & hints of white. If i was a fly or maybe a beetle id be in for a look too. It would be interesting to know, if the area in general has lesser populations of butterflies & moths ? And would be intrigued to know if there is any notable fragrance or perhaps any odor ? Again with Australian Desert Crinums here in Queensland we smell delightful strong musky jasmine fragrances where we have a high predominance of small native stingless bees, butterflies & hawk moths, but as we cross the desert toward South Australia, the fragrance disappears & becomes a somewhat cat like uric odor, although there is still a hint of fragrance on a lite breeze. Here flies & beetles can be common pollinators. I wonder if you find a similar pollinator comparison with the Geissorhiza & Babiana, which from memory don't have much fragrance over all ? Enjoy the rest of your studies & tank you for sharing! Steven Hart Queensland Australia On 28 September 2017 at 07:06, Evan Eifler <evan.eifler@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Everyone! I'd like to post a short update on the work I'm doing this > week with the radiant winecup (Geissorhiza radians) and its look-alikes, > but first I'd like to remind you that there are only 3(!) days left of my > crowdfunding campaign so if you've been considering donating, now's the > time. And if you haven't already, please forward the link to anyone you > think might be interested. I know many of you in North America have been > donating to hurricane relief and that comes first, absolutely, but it's > also important to fund scientific research, especially environmental > research now, before it's too late and this weather becomes the new normal > which could spell the end for Critically Endangered species already > teetering on the brink like many I'm working with. > > https://experiment.com/projects/… > the-cape-floristic-region > Once again, I'm posting the text here, but please visit the lab note on my > crowdfunding campaign for the photos that go along with the text - well > worth the extra click! Link below > > https://experiment.com/u/xC5uLg/ > > > Can you spot the difference between each of the flowers below? > As I've been thinking about this today, I can't help but be concerned for > the future of this incredibly intricate and fragile web thousands, if not > millions of years in the making. If each of these species depend on the > others and each of these species is already severely threatened, how are > they and the other symbioses of the Cape going to weather further human > impact either directly through habitat loss or indirectly through alien > species invasion and climate change? If one goes, do they all go? > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… > -- Steven : ) Esk Queensland Australia Summer Zone 5 Winter Zone 10 _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…