Hyacinthus orientalis wild form
Mary Sue Ittner (Sat, 10 Apr 2004 07:44:11 PDT)

Dear All,

The picture of Lauw's Hyacinthus orientalis 'Villa Petraya' makes it look
quite nice. The color is much better than mine which is a light purple. It
is disappointing to read that this is one of the bulbs currently missing
from Lauw's inventory. It sounds like Jim Waddick can grow the cultivars
just fine in his colder garden, but people are suggesting the wild form for
warmer gardens. Has anyone tested the hardiness?

While I was looking on Lauw's web page I checked out what pictures he had
for Bellevalia, our topic of the week and he has a picture of Bellevalia
romana (the "good doer"), the one I didn't get a picture for our wiki.
Under the description he has called it a "Roman Hyacinth" which is what
Cynthia Mueller talked about growing in Texas. I asked her what she thought
the botanical name was for her plants and she suggested it could be
Hyacinthus orientalis var. albulus. I searched in the IPNI list and there
isn't any listing for this. There is a listing for H. orientalis however.
There are two published listing for Hyacinthus romanus however. One equals
dubius so perhaps that listing was for what is now known as Bellevalia
dubia. There is another one for Hyacinthus romanus however which would be a
logical botanical name for Roman Hyacinths. So if this plant is now known
as Bellevalia romana it sounds like we have two different plants that are
called Roman Hyacinths.

Mary Sue
Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers