October 2023 photos

[Carlos]

Hi, I was lucky to spend a few days on Ibiza island and of course there's more to it than sangria, paella, sun and beach.

The autumn flowering season was in late summer this year, but there were still some flowers and anyway it's good to find geophytes with seeds...

Prospero obtusifolium, most really tiny with 4-6 flowers, they seemed to be suffering from drought and too high temperatures for this time of the year. P. autumnalis has been reported from the island but I only saw obtusifolium in three spots several km apart.



Colchicum filifolium (ex Merendera), these seemed all right



Urginea fugax, only place where it can be seen out of Northern Africa along with Corsica and Sardinia. Very difficult to spot when not in flower or with capsules.



Allium sp. maybe subhirsutum, growing on a very hard soil with calcareous incrustations just next to the Urginea, which grow on red clay



Narcissus deficiens, widespread on the island, 99% were shedding seeds or with capsules, I still captured one flower



Carlos

[Carlos]

Last image of N. deficiens:



Squilla (Urginea) numidica, as I said known in error as maritima in the US, huge stalks and big bulbs with brick-red tunics. Seed set seemed to be affected by drought and heat as well (first two photos in the same spot of the Prospero in the south on a sun-baked hill, third one on the eastern part of the island under pine trees.  One Cneorum tricoccon, very abundant on the Balearics but threatened on the continent, can be seen in the background).



Finally, the sunset from the southwesternmost tip of the island, overlooking Es Vedrà and Es Vedranell islets.



Carlos

[Uli]

Hello Carlos,

Thank you for sharing your habitat photos. 

[janemcgary]

This photo compares three species of Sternbergia. The large flowers are Sternbergia clusiana; the medium-sized one, Sternbergia lutea; the very small one, Sternbergia greuteriana. Photographed in October 2023. The S. lutea was from commercial stock, the others grown here from seed.

[Carlos]

Still Narcissus time, this has been distributed as elegans × viridiflorus but if you know both species you'll recognize a typical flower of elegans, only with a greenish hue.Viridiflorus hybrids inherit the cleft corona.

This is KV698 from Al-Hoceima, Morocco, the same area from were Narcissus elegans var. fallax was found and described by the military doctor and botanist Font Quer.

I keep wondering how many pixels must be chosen to post smaller photos, but with an acceptable quality. I prefer bigger images this time, though.

⁹

[Martin Bohnet]

@Carlos : The upload function resizes to 1024 px on the longest side.

@janemcgary : At least greuteriana is again accepted at least as lutea subspecies and not a pure synonym as I too think the difference is unignorable. 2 questions: 
a) my Sternbergias usually get the flowers with or, more often, after the leaves, while you seem to have bare flowers without leaves - which one is the "typical" behavior?
b) what's that cute tiny colchicum in the picture?

[janemcgary]

I also have a very small form of Sternbergia lutea, I think from Crete, and it looks different from what I have as greuteriana. In the photo, the absence of leaves with the S. lutea is because I picked a flower and stuck it in the soil as a size comparison; the S. lutea does have leaves at anthesis. S. clusiana flowers before the leaves appear.
The small colchicum is Colchicum cupanii.

[Carlos]

I think that small form has been called Sternbergia minoica. All this "lutea complex" should be studied with a molecular approach. 

Carlos

[Arnold]

Couple of early flower spikes not yet fully open.

Veltheimia capsensis
Scilla madeirensis
Strumaria truncata

[Diane Whitehead]

I was puzzled why a nerine flower was sitting on a small pot.  Had someone knocked it off?

Then I found one of my hybrids was growing in the pot and was flowering, right at the surface of the soil.  I hybridize nerines every year and didn't write the date on its label, but it might be from 2018.  I was hoping for a brighter colour.

The pot is 12 cm tall (5 inches).

[Martin Bohnet]

hmm, the flower alone looks a lot like Nerine "Flugel" (which was likely meant as "Flügel" = Wing), one of my new ones - no idea if there are sarniensis genes in that one. Other than that, the autumn turns wetter, destroying delicate crocus, but Galanthus reginae-olgae

persists. Last picture fuels the speculation if I'll have my first Tropaeolum tuberosum

Flower Colors:	orange, yellow, red
Flower Season:	late summer
Special:	climber, edible flowers, edible storage organ

flowers this season, last year there was no trace of buds to be found

[Robert_Parks]

Last picture fuels the speculation if I'll have my first Tropaeolum tuberosum

Flower Colors:	orange, yellow, red
Flower Season:	late summer
Special:	climber, edible flowers, edible storage organ

flowers this season, last year there was no trace of buds to be found

As long as you get a bit of passable weather you should get a burst of blooms...mine tend to bloom in surges, different cultivars overlapping as they go in and out of bloom.

[Arnold]

Here's what's on show for today.

Veltheimia capsensis
Strumaria truncata
Scilla madeirensis

[gastil]

Hi @Arnold , I'm growing Veltheimia capensis

for its grey-green ruffled leaves. Mine has never flowered. Does yours have the grey-green ruffled leaves? I'm tempted to order seed from the current SX since I only have one (surviving) specimen. I started a batch of seeds a few years back but I was a bad seed mommy.   Time to try again.

How old were your Scilla madeirensis

before they first bloomed? Mine I am only this year potting up. My bulbs are still only an inch in diameter. How big did your bulbs get in diameter before they bloomed first? I've put mine in rather large pots in hopes they are like goldfish growing to the size of their pond.

Two things blooming now here are Scilla lingulata (or Hyacinthoides lingulata

if you prefer) and Crocus goulimyi

.

[Arnold]

Gastil

The Veltheimia does have the grey green ruffled leaves.  It flowers earlier than the V. bracteata.

The Scilla madeirensis was full size when I got it from  a Longfield nursery in PA.

It's flowered reliably each year early in the season.
The bulbs are at least two inches in diameter.

They spend summers in a basement without water. Our basements here stay at 65 F most of the time.