Albuca viscosa

[Carlos]

Hi, it is summer, there are few posts, and I was given some bulbs of an Albuca that made me research a bit, so I'm afraid this is another one of my posts on misapplied names.

I got this plant [Albuca 'spiralis' ex Château Pérouse, from EX02 20240312 https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php?topic=820.msg5741#msg5741] identified as Albuca viscosa but I have looked at the first descriptions of Albuca in the narrow sense and they are plants with (mostly) nodding flowers with three spread outer tepals and the inner tepals united hiding THREE fertile stamens.

But there are some species with six spreading tepals, yellow or white with a green central stripe, and SIX fertile stamens. These plantas were placed in two genera, Coilonox and Nemaulax, by the US botanist Rafinesque, who has been largely ignored and is considered an ultra-splitter, but from what I have read in modern studies based both on morphology, biochemical compounds and genetic analysis, he was right in many, many cases.

Albuca viscosa was described by Linnaeus's son in his Supplementum Plantarum of 1781 as "Albuca floribus erectis, foliis linearibus villoso-viscosis. Habitat in Cap. Bonae Spei. thunberg"

That is "Albuca with ERECT flowers, linear, glandular-pubescent leaves. Habitat in the Cape of Good Hope. Thunberg".

The reference to "Thunberg" is to a dried specimen in a herbarium. As it was cited by Linnaeus, it is "original material" and the type for the taxon (but as Linnaeus did not include the word Typus, a formal typification should have been made, I have not checked if it has been done).

A few years later, the Swedish botanist Jonas Dryander placed Albuca viscosa within the division "All stamens fertile", and added to the original description "petalis interioribus apice fornicatis*, foliis piloso-glandulosis", that is "Inner tepals arched at the apex, glandular-pubescent leaves.

[*fornicatus,-a,-um (adj.): arched, provided with small arched scale-like appendages in the corolla-tube, lit. 'vaulted, i.e. an arched structure, a space covered by an arched structure [especially underground; taken from A grammatical dictionary of Botanical Latin, www.mobot.org]

Thunberg was also Swedish and Dryander could see his herbarium and the sheet of Albuca viscosa, which is now in the Upsala herbarium (UPS V-008245) but not digitised online, unfortunately. But it is quite obvious that the six fertile stamens can be seen in the specimen, and so he added the information to the description of the plant.

To sum up, it is clear (for me) that true Albuca viscosa has erect flowers with a rotate perianth, with six fertile stamens and arched or hooded tips in the inner tepals, probably with a tuft of hairs. All these traits were used by Rafinesque to define Coilonox,  a genus which has been "resurrected" by a Spanish team in my region, in the Alicante University, and Michael F. Fay from Kew Gardens, UK.

Molecular phylogenetics of subfamily Ornithogaloideae (Hyacinthaceae) based on nuclear and plastid DNA regions, including a new taxonomic arrangement. Annals of Botany 107(1):1-37

(PDF) Molecular phylogenetics of subfamily Ornithogaloideae (Hyacinthaceae) based on nuclear and plastid DNA regions, including a new taxonomic arrangement (researchgate.net)
Sadly, the only Coilonox included in their study were concordianum, polyphyllum, secundum and suaveolens, so we have no confirmation of Albuca viscosa being a Coilonox other than that made through morphology, and they did not include any Nemaulax (fastigiata, for example, type for the genus).

Personally, Goldblatt and Manning were very good at Iridaceae, but just messed it all up in Hyacinthaceae by recombining many species into Ornithogalum and keeping all Drimia. I think that the research of Martínez-Azorín et al. should be added to the Wiki.

Final remark: if the plants growing near @Robin Jangle are not spiralis and not viscosa, what are they? Maybe my plant is Albuca spiralis after all?

[Anonymized User]

All taxa with six fertile stamens and spreading tepals were previously included in Ornithogalum. Albuca has been amplified to include all taxa previously included in Ornithogalum that have a green median stripe on the tepals.
Albuca spiralis has six stamens but the outer three are sterile. Albuca viscosa has six stamens with the outer three smaller.
So six stamens = A. viscosa. Neither A. spiralis nor A. viscosa have erect flowers. I don't bother to even dissect the flowers - I just check the foliage - clasping below = spiralis.

[Anonymized User]

I forgot to add that Albuca viscosa is incredibly variable as regards foliage.
Within a three kilometre radius of my house I have:
1) Across the road in gravelly sand a tall form with 25-30cm tall olive green very conspicuously glandular succulent foliage.
2) About 130m above my house on an ancient wave-cut platform in seasonally wet fine-grained sand (with Wurmbea hiemalis) is a tiny form 5-7cm tall very fine dark green barely conspicuously glandular wiry foliage - coiled laterally i.e. not erect like a corkscrew but coiled up on itself. Some plants have wavy foliage and the two variants do not grow together - they occur as meta populations in the same habitat.
3) About three km's ESE of my house in the ecotone between recent (100's of 1000's of years old) marine sands and quartzitic sand derived from the bedrock sandstone of the Table Mountain Group there's an intermediate size form - 10-15cm tall dark green succulent foliage also tightly coiled laterally and also barely conspicuously glandular.
The tiny form is particularly attractive. I have only seen the large form in flower as I only discovered the other populations recently post-fire. I will update with pictures in due course.

[Carlos]

Thanks, Robin.

My point is, if the original author said erect flowers, the real plant has erect flowers. Or he could have been misled by seeing only a dried specimen, too (artifact due to how the flowers were pressed). I need to get an image of Thunberg's specimen to try to ascertain this.

I'd be very grateful if you could share photos of the flowers in your area.

According to the research I mentioned (and to Rafinesque, in the 18th century) the species with 6 fertile stamens "clearly" do not belong in Albuca and thus it has alternatively been "splitted" into Coilonox, Eliokarmos, Trimelopter, etc., or rather these "Rafinesquian genera" have been resurrected / reinstated / claimed.

Peter Goldblatt is retired, but Manning is still active and to some extent "fighting back" the Spanish team, for example swapping Trimelopter crispolanatum and Eliokarmos humanii (published in 2020) to Albuca and Ornithogalum, respectively, just because he does not accept Eliokarmos, nor Trimelopter....  When experts don't work for knowledge but for their own conceptions, knowledge itself suffers.

Who is right? I don't know, it's not that I'm Spanish but I tend to think that lumping is not the solution with these plants. I would probably be OK with a treatment with subgenera, but Manning & Goldblatt stuck to Ornithogalum and the Spanish team claim that the genera are well defined (monophyletic) and stick to their approach of separate genera.


Personally, I just want to know what Albuca viscosa is.

Carlos

[Carlos]

Hi again.

I have been reading and chatting with Robin.

I finally  think that the Spanish team might be wrong, and Goldblatt and Manning right. All these "genera" are probably best regarded as Ornithogalum, divided in subgenera and sections.

That means that it is probably the same with Drimia, another group which has been ultra-splitted by the same team, to a great extent following also Rafinesque, Speta and Pfosser.

As Socrates said, All I know is that I know nothing....

Carlos