Scilla and Taxonomic changes
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:09:52 PST)

Dear Lauw and Jerry and all,

Jane McGary asked for a source when Julian provided that proposed revision
data and Julian provided it in a subsequent email to our group, Scilla
biography. There was some very interesting discussion between the two of
them (archives from December 19, 2003).

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/old.php/…

Julian and I have been communicating privately about Polyxena as I had a
plant (grown as sp. #2) that bloomed and I wanted confirmation for what I
thought it might be. I hadn't shared this with the group as I intended to
do something with the Polyxena wiki page first and haven't found the time
or decided exactly what. Polyxena has been transferred to Lachenalia by
Manning, Goldblatt and Fay. Here is the resource:
J.C. Manning, P. Goldblatt & M.F. Fay, "A revised generic synopsis of
Hyacinthaceae in sub-Saharan Africa, including new combinations and the new
tribe Pseudoprospereae", Edinburgh Journal of Botany 60(3): 533-568 (2004).

Julian wrote to me:
"The article discusses an unpublished DNA study by the same authors, and
their results suggest a giant taxonomic upheaval for most of the family,
and they made the necessary numerous new combinations. Apart from the
sinking of Polyxena into Lachenalia: Drimiopsis and Resnova were sunk into
Ledebouria; Albuca, Dipcadi, Galtonia, Neopatersonia, and Pseudogaltonia
were sunk into Ornithogalum; Litanthus, Rhadamanthus, Rhodocodon,
Schizobasis, Tenicroa, Thuranthos, and Urginea were sunk into Drimia; and
Whiteheadia sunk into Massonia. At the same time, they recognise the
splitting of Scilla, but only for the southern African species; no comment
was made on the Eurasian species. I've also noticed a dozen or so taxonomic
errors; for example, Dipcadi glaucum was renamed Ornithogalum magnum, which
is a name already used for an different species of Ornithogalum. All the
new combinations can be found doing an IPNI search
<http://www.ipni.org/ipni/query_ipni.html>http://www.ipni.org/ipni/query_ipni.html,
making sure that both IK and GCI extended options are selected."

By the way in this new article Scilla natalensis which became Merwilla
natalensis is now Merwilla plumbea. Another plant we've discussed in this
group, Eucomis pole-evansii is now considered a subspecies of E.
pallidiflora. I don't know if South African bulb enthusiasts are going
along with all these changes. I suppose I'll need to write a note on some
of our wiki pages explaining the proposed changes . Sigh. It is hard to
keep up with all of this.

Mary Sue