Wachendorfia on the wiki
John Bryan (Tue, 07 Jun 2005 09:47:14 PDT)

Dear Bill:

Great to see the Wachendorfia being grown, they look sharp, no wonder
people slow down to look at them.
In Plants of Southern Africa, Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South
Africa # 62, five species are listed. They are: W.brachyandra, W.
graminifolia, W. paniculata, W. parviflora and W. thyrsiflora. I found
it strange they did not list W. multiflora but this is in fact a synonym
of W. parviflora, I think W. parviflora is the old name. I have not
found any information on W. graminiflora, again I think this is now
included in W. parviflora, and in my book BULBS, I list it under that
name so there are but 4 species, so I agree with you that there are but
4 species. In my book I have photographs of W. thyrsiflora and W.
paniculata with a photo I took in the wild which I think is W.p. var.
pallida.
For too long these plants have been ignored. W. paniculata is quite a
lovely little plant. Thanks for your comments, Cheers, John E. Bryan

Bill Richardson wrote:

Wachendofia is an interesting species to grow and well worth the effort. I
have all species available that I know of and have grown them for many
years. W. thyrsifolia is really too large a plant for pots but makes a nice
feature garden. I had the opportunity a few years ago to design a feature
garden where I worked and I used W. thyrsifolia as a feature border plant, a
whole row of them along a garden bed and when they flowered they looked so
good that the street traffic would slow down to look as it passed.
"Bulbous Plants os South Africa" lists five species (page 179) but I know
of only four.
Martin Rix in "Growing Bulbs" (1983) says "about 20 species in South Africa"
(appendix 1 page 187). I wonder where he gets this kind of information from?

From my experience, it is not weedy, I have had a clump in my garden for

years and it has not been invasive. It does seed profusely but so do many
other species as we all know.I have written an article at Suite101 :
http://suite101.com/article.cfm/bulbs_and_plants/…
on Wachendorfia, which you are quite welcome to add to your Wiki page if you
so wish. My photo of the feature garden is shown in this article.
regards,

Bill Richardson
Ixia King - ixia@dcsi.net.au
Ixia Website: http://www.angelfire.com/ri/ixia/
Suite 101: http://suite101.com/welcome.cfm/bulbs_and_plants/
Writers Suite: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/strange_tales

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