I do appreciate your input on this Mary Sue, and am going with your suggestion re naming. The variation obviously makes it near on impossible to distinguish with any certainty, and I don't like to misname plants. I've potted these two little ones on into decent sized pots so it will be interesting to follow their progress in subsequent years and to see if they develop more than the one flower per stem. Thanks again everyone for the very interesting discussion. Terry On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 3:38 AM, Mary Sue Ittner <msittner@mcn.org> wrote: > Rod and Rachel Saunders are finding a lot of variation in species as > they search for Gladiolus in the wild for their book. Some > populations don't quite fit the descriptions in some of the Goldblatt > -Manning books. There is great diversity in the wild which is why we > have added multiple photos of many of the species to the wiki to > illustrate this. I remember it being a bit hopeless to distinguish > between Gladiolus venustus and G. scullyi. Some people were > identifying plants by virtue of where they were growing, not how they > looked. > > When I first looked at Terry's photos it reminded me of Gladiolus > quadrangularis even though the plants I grew from Silverhill Seed > didn't fit the description of that species. > > The key for that species in the Encyclopedia is: > Tepals lanceolate, the upper laterals more than twice as long as > wide; flowers with the lower tepals uniformly red or orange toward the > base. > It can bloom between August and October. But the spike usually has > more flowers than Terry's plants, 4 to 10. Leaves linear, the midrib > strongly raised, x shaped in cross section, 2.4-4mm wide. Corm > globose with tunics of firm, wiry fibers. > > Another to consider is Gladiolus huttonii or one of those hybrids of > it. It blooms at the right time. Leaves are the same description as > G. quadrangularis, but 2-3 mm. wide. Corm is ovoid with tunics of > coarse fibers. Flowers are in a 3 to 8 flowered spike, red to orange > with the lower tepals sometimes yellow. The flowers are large, with > the dorsal tepal 25-60 cm. > > Terry could always call this Gladiolus sp., Homoglossum section. > > Mary Sue > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > -- terry frewin 661 upper boho road boho 3669 03 5790 8635 0429 908 635