Daubenya help
Mary Sue Ittner (Thu, 23 Oct 2003 20:27:20 PDT)

Dear All,

Last year Peter Maynard announced that his Daubenya aurea has just finished
blooming in November. He said he had the red form. I thought this was
rather strange since Peter lives in the U.K. and the normal time for
Daubenya aurea to bloom is September in South Africa so for it to be
blooming in the Northern Hemisphere at the same time would be unusual.
Still people sometimes are able to turn around plants as we will hopefully
be discussing soon.

Peter has just sent me a picture of his Daubenya in bud now and I have
added it to the wiki. I am wondering if it could be a different species.
There are newly assigned Daubenyas that bloom in the fall in South Africa.
One of them with leaves like Peter's is Daubenya zeyheri. This plant has
had these names: Massonia zeyheri, Polyxena zeyheri, Massonia pedunculataa,
Massonia burchellii, Neobarkia burchellii, Massonia angustifolia. The
Kirstenbosch West Coast field guide shows a picture of Massonia
angustifolia which I assume is this plant and Spring and Winter Flowering
Bulbs of the Cape has a picture of Neobarkia angustifolia which I assume is
the same thing as well. The taxonomists must have had a field day with this
one. It blooms May-June so the timing would be right for Peter's plants.
Daubenya capensis also has similar leaves, but blooms at the wrong time.

Here is Peter's picture:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/…

It would seem like the center of the plant might be helpful in identifying
it, but maybe there are several like that. I hope someone can identify
this. I know Julian Slade is really up to date with a lot of the South
African bulbs in this family. And we do have a lot of people from South
Africa on this list now too who might help. I'll rename it and spell it
properly once we get it identified and then we can add it to the Daubenya page.

Thanks.

Mary Sue