Hippeastrum ferreyrae

[Carlos]

Hi, I tried to resist but I am finally into Southern Amaryllidaceae, both American and African, for collecting and scientific and conservation purposes.

Taxonomy and nomenclature fall within the scientific part. I started with Hippeastrum.

Thanks to Michael Homick and Paul's efforts I have been able to read many of Traub's descriptions, and hopefully I will have those of Pierfelice (Pedro Félix) Ravenna.

As I soon found out, Traub was a splitter and/or did not read previous papers, and many of his 'species' are useless or synonyms of earlier names (Amaryllis fosteri = stylosum). But I think ferreyrae is good.

Amaryllis ferreyrae was described in Plant Life 6: 62 (1950) from a tiny island in the river Huallaga a couple of loops north of a village known as Yurimaguas, in the Peruvian Amazon basin, as follows (Traub used 'tepalsegs' for the tepals proper:

Bulb with a short neck, 2 cm. long ; leaves 3-4, contemporary with the flowers in September (Peru), to 55 cm long, 3 cm at the middle, lorate-lanceolate-acute above, narrowed to 6 mm at the base ; peduncle 15-19 cm tall, about 1.5 cm in diameter at the base, 4 5 mm at the apex; umbel 2-flowered; spathe 2-valved, valves free to the base, lanceolate, 6 cm long; pedicels 8-9.5 cm. long; ovary 10 mm long, 6 mm wide; perigone wide open, red; tepaltube slender, 2.5 cm long; paraperigone absent; the perigone-limb of 6 tepalsegs 9 cm. long, tepalsegs
3-4 cm wide at the middle, pointed at the apex; the 6 stamens of 4 sets of lengths, attached at the mouth of the tepaltube, 6.5 cm long, slightly shorter than the style which is shorter than the tepalsegs ; stamens and style declinate-ascending; anthers 7 mm long; stigma flat, triangular on top. Type specimen Ferreyra 4997, accession in Traub Herbarium nos. 111-112. Collected by Dr. Ramon Ferreyra on the Isla Santa Maria, near Yurimaguas, Huallaga Valley, Dept. Loreto, Peru, alt. 150 200 m.
in the forest, Sept. 16, 1948.

Notes. This fine species belongs in the Subgenus Aschamia. It differs from Amaryllis Leopoldii in color pattern of the flower, and in having less regular tepalsegs, and shorter stamens and style, and from Amaryllis Reginae in having leaves fully developed with the flowers, spathe-valves shorter than the pedicels, a longer tepaltube, and a style shorter than the tepalsegs. Amaryllis Ferreyrae will represent a fine addition to the germplasm collection of the Amaryllis breeder. It is named in honor of Dr. Ramon Ferreyra.


So, we have a synanthous plant, with red flowers and no paraperigone, related to H reginae and H. leopoldii.

My point is: the photos in the PBS Wiki don't seem to me to fit this description, it seems a hybrid or a variation of H. puniceum. Puniceum has a fimbriated paraperigone.

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/HippeastrumSpeciesOne#

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/HippeastrumSpeciesOne#


Images of what some observers consider H. ferreyrae:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69428136

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/193090067

Puniceum in the Peruvian Amazon:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/190503647
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/181612055

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67999248

Some seem to have the line on tepals 3 and 5.

I'll be back with more.

Carlos