Ledebouria sp.
Mary Sue Ittner (Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:43:36 PDT)

Hi,

There seems to be a fair amount of interest in our group in
Ledebouria, but a lot of frustration too about identification of
them. On our wiki Ledebouria page we have a lot of unidentified
species and I have some other pictures of species from Cameron on CDs
that are also labeled Ledebouria sp.

I have added one of my own today. I grew it from seed from Silverhill
Seed labeled L. ovalifolia. I must not have looked it up or found out
much about it and assumed it was a summer rainfall species so started
the seed in April instead of in the fall and it germinated a couple
of months later and I ended up with three bulbs. I continued to grow
it that way, moving it undercover in the winter where it remained
damp but not soggy during its dormancy and watering it in summer. It
started blooming five years later and has continued to produce leaves
in spring and bloom late spring-early summer (May to June). I never
got around to adding photos of it to the wiki. Recently I decided to
do that and discovered that it is unlikely that it is that species
since that one is described in a number of my sources as having
ascending or erect leaves. I looked back at Rhoda's introduction when
this was a topic of the week and she stated that Hankey described
this species as having appressed leaves, but said the ones she grew
had semi-upright leaves. It has a broad distribution from the
northwest Cape to the southeastern Cape so perhaps there could be
variation in the leaves.

I asked Aaron for an opinion and he suggested L. marginata. But it
doesn't have the distinctive margin of that species and the Venter
description of it states it has spirally twisted tough glaucous
leaves with prominent venation that are partly emerged with
flowering. The leaves of my plants appear before flowering and I
wouldn't describe them that way. He also suggested perhaps L.
ovatifolia or L. revoluta but those leaves are usually spotted and
the later often crisped. After struggling a bit with the Venter paper
in Herbertia I decided the best option was to declare it another sp.
and add it to the rest on the wiki page.

If any of you have any ideas about it or any of the others we haven't
figured out, please speak up. The new one is at the bottom of the
others, but opinions about any of them are welcome.
<http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/….>

Mary Sue

Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers