Hi,

John Grimshaw asked me to add his picture of Ornithogalum secundum to the
wiki and I have done so:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
All my books say it is yellow with green keels. The Namaqualand field
guide
doesn't have a picture of it however, choosing instead to have a picture
of
the leaves that look like Crossyne leaves to me and are described as
strap-shaped with minutely fringed translucent margins arranged in a
rosette lying flat on the ground. The drawing in the Spring and Winter
Flowering Bulbs of the Cape shows leaves that are erect and the
description
is the same. The leaves in the two book don't look at all alike. The
leaves
are apparently gone at flowering. I'm really curious what the leaves look
like on John's plants.

I have a number of photographs of species we saw in Namaqualand last
September and haven't added them to the wiki since I have no clue what
species they are and they aren't quite like any in my field guide. Anyone
in our group good at identifying Ornithogalum species who might be able to
help me sort them out?

I'd like to comment also on Paul Tyerman's lament about the one season of
his orange Ornithogalum dubiums. I've had similar problems and yellow ones
I bought never flowered again so my yellow ones were not better. Last year
I unpotted all I had that had including the ones that were not coming
up and put them in trays upstairs in my house (the warmest spot in
summer). I was thinking of tossing them and didn't get around to potting
them for a long time and when I looked at some of them they had tiny roots
on the bottom. So I potted the ones up that seemed to be rooting and had
more blooming this year than usual. I was told in South Africa by an
exporter that the Dutch won't let them send any unless they have a shoot.
I'm going to try this neglect system again this year and see if it will
stimulate them to grow again. Some never showed any signs of sprouting so
I
tossed those.

Mary Sue

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