Dear Dietrich, Thank you for your welcome input. So we can say this is *Albuca polyphylla*, wherever it may be from? Here are some notes that may help sort the cultivated material of this species in the U.S.: I received plants from Arid Lands Greenhouses (Chuck Hanson) in 1999. Chuck told me they were grown from seed collected, or originally collected, in the Aughrabies Hills. I did not learn who the collector was. I believe this nursery is likely the source of this locality being associated with this plant. The locality is definitely a real place well known to succulent collectors, a low set of hills near the Orange River that looks very arid but harbors a number of interesting dwarf succulents, including Tylecodon and Conophytum: http://cactuspro.com/conophytum-lithops/in-situ/… Previously, in 1994, I had obtained from Michael Vassar a very similar plant that he collected near Dysselsdorp under his number MV 4442. More recently, the Huntington Botanical Gardens through its ISI program offered the same plant as "Albuca longipes": http://huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/ISI2007/… This is also a Michael Vassar collection but from nearby Willowmore and under a different number. Both the Huntington and myself got plants and data directly from Michael so I suspect they are two different collections of the same species. He often made such "close" collections of Oxalis. The name A. longipes in this case is incorrect since A. longipes does not cluster (to speak of), has underground white bulbs, only a few, much longer, brittle, channeled leaves, and different flowers with a much different fragrance. Some sense of the floral differences can be gleaned from the PBS wiki photos. It could be the case that "Aughrabies Hills" is simply an erroneous locality for the plant we are growing. At this point its precise origin must be regarded as dubious. If it does occur there then it may exist as a voucher (specimen) in a South African herbarium. Whatever the case I am happy to finally have a name for this delightful plant. Dylan Hannon Los Angeles 2012/3/25 Dietrich Müller-Doblies <d.mueller-doblies@gmx.de> > Dear Pamela, > Where do you know from that your plant Albuca 'Augrabies Hills' is from > "the northwest Cape near the southeastern Namibian border" as you state > on the Albuca Wiki? There are in the usual gazetteers several Augrabies > in "the northwest Cape near the southeastern Namibian border" such as > Augrabies Falls, and Augrabies East & Augrabies West near Springbok but > no Augrabies Hills. Is there perhaps an Augrabies Hills in the Eastern > Cape? > Roy Herold is absolutely right: "albuca seeds I collected in 2008 in > Uniondale produced plants that are identical to A. Augrabies Hills." My > wife Ute cultivates Albuca polyphylla since 35 years from many (more > than 24) localities in the Eastern Cape and the eastern part of the > Western Cape. > Our first plants from Bathurst collected by R.D. Bayliss in DEC. 1977 > are still alive in the Botanical Garden of Berlin, thus indeed rather > hardy. > Kind regards > Dietrich > >
