Romulea, was unknown bulb
Mary Sue Ittner (Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:37:10 PDT)

Hi,

When I looked at Ina's photo, it was clear to me that it was an
African Romulea, but as Angelo mentioned, which one would have been
difficult to tell from the photos. There are many beautiful species
and a lot of variation even in the species that you see in the wild.
Some of them are identified by their corms. I can remember seeing Rod
and Rachel Saunders dig them up to have a look and then replanting
them immediately so they could note which species when they came back
to collect seed. I've sometimes spent hours with the keys trying to
figure them out ones from seed exchanges where they are often
misidentified. It's not so easy to identify them from a photo. There
may be a character you don't have at the moment like the seeds or the
corms even when you have the plant in front of you. I've requested
some of the ones that I've had trouble keeping going from the BX in
the past and known when I got them they were wrongly named since the
corm was wrong. It's one reason why I've added a lot of corm photos
of Romuleas to the wiki.

There are winter rainfall and summer rainfall species so they are
dormant at different times of the year depending on that. No doubt
Ina's is a winter rainfall bulb that will go dormant in the summer
and start again in the fall. Romulea rosea comes in many different
forms. It is extremely weedy (not the most beautiful forms of it of
course) in Australia. When we visited the Mediterranean areas of
Australia a number of years ago in the three weeks we were there
visiting different wild areas I think we saw it every day. It's now
been identified in great numbers in Sonoma County, California, a
county south to the one I live in. No doubt it grows well in New
Zealand. In Miriam De Vos' Romulea book she even named this form
var. australis. But that form is smaller and doesn't look like Ina's
photo. Currently the varieties aren't recognized.

But because that species can be weedy doesn't mean all of the species
are weedy. And some are a challenge to grow. It is one of my favorite
genera. Many of the species are very beautiful.

Mary Sue