All Albucas are now Ornithogalums - it has been published. In our seed catalogue we are still calling them Albuca as everyone knows what Albucas look like! The reason for the lumping is that there are quite a few species that overlap the 2 genera and cannot be put into either genus with any certainty. If anyone is interested I can look for the reference. Regards Rachel Saunders Tel +27 21 762 4245 Fax +27 21 797 6609 PO Box 53108, Kenilworth, 7745 South Africa ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary Sue Ittner" <msittner@mcn.org> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 5:34 AM Subject: [pbs] Albuca > Dear Linda, > > I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether all Albucas are now > Ornithogalums. As Jane wrote, Manning and Goldblatt do seem to be lumping a > lot of South African genera. Ornithogalum was already a large genus before > <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Albuca, > <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Dipcadi, > Galtonia, Neopatersonia, and > <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…>Pseudoga ltonia > were to be added to it. In South Africa when we visited and looked at > plants in the field there were Ornithogalums that I thought were Albucas > until told otherwise because they looked like the Albucas I was familiar with. > > On the other hand we heard that Speta was splitting Scilla which like > Albuca is in the same family into many new genera which is going in the > opposite direction at the same time. Some of those proposed changes I > understand from Julian Slade who follows all of this could change again > with some of the new genera (Fessia, Pfosseria, Zagrosia - possibly also > Alrawia, Othocallis, and even Puschkinia) being sunk into Hyacinthus. > > It does seem like Manning and Goldblatt are very highly respected in South > Africa and often what they propose is accepted. > > We have discussed on this list that we can choose to go along or not and as > long as you include the name of the person who published the specific > epithet you are always correct. Unfortunately for most of us gardeners that > is not information that most of us pay much attention to. I think it > becomes increasingly difficult to know if we are talking about the same > plant if it goes by many names. I try to add the synonyms to the wiki if I > can figure out what they are. > > If you are interested in Albuca I hope you have checked out our wiki page > as Albuca was one of our topics of the week and Julian Slade provided us > with a very complete introduction. Perhaps he will comment on Linda's > question if he is reading this. > > >Mary Sue, are all Albuca now Ornithogalum? or is this still in the proposal > >stage. > > > Mary Sue > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php >