Worsleya
J.E. Shields (Sat, 18 Sep 2004 08:14:23 PDT)

Hi all,

A web search turned up the web site http://www.sysbot.org/ and an abstract
of a publication

Systematic Botany: Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 708–726 (2000)
"Phylogeny of the American Amaryllidaceae based on nrDNA ITS sequences"
Alan W. Meerow, Charles L. Guy, Qin-Bao Li, and Si-Lin Yang

Which I can only read as the abstract, since I don't subscribe to that
journal. Worsleya is not mentioned in the abstract. Alan does note in the
abstract that

"Within the hippeastroid clade, the tribe Griffineae is resolved as sister
to the rest of Hippeastreae. "

which suggests that Hippeastrum is not an acceptable genus name for what we
refer to as Worsleya rayneri or procerum. Other publications from Alan
have put Worsleya and Griffinia in the tribe Griffineae, as far as I can
recall at the moment. See the link at the bottom of the web
page http://shieldsgardens.com/amaryllids/…

Based on the DNA work, it appears that there is no way this species can be
included in the genus Hippeastrum.

We can safely use either Worsleya rayneri or Worsleya procerum to refer to
this plant without fear of being misunderstood.

Jim Shields

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