Geissorhiza Research Update
Steven Hart (Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:40:57 PDT)

A delight to the eye Evan, Im happy you were able to capture photos of this
little group of endangered beauties, although i prefer the pastel blue
Geissorhizas myself.
I wish i could have seen them all in flower too, I bet the fluorescence is
amazing compared to the photos. Thank you for your earlier response, i too
am pleased there is collection limits. Although i still think all
collection is high risk, unless used for regeneration purposes. Rather than
added to the Halls of Extinction, and dig areas are carefully manicured to
mask the removal process.

You might find this interesting for your research, in regard to removal. I
visit rare Crinum venosum colonies in Queensland Australia annually, most
of these plants are unlucky because most live on cattle & horse properties,
rather than in the wild, which has mostly been cleared by greedy
governments & land holders. I have observed in recent years, where even
small numbers of plants have been removed for study or by poachers stealing
them, the small pockets of ground disturbance has led to cattle digging
away the gully edges where the plants favor, due to cattle loving to dig
fresh exposed earth. What starts as shallow dig holes as round as a bucket,
ends up large exposed wallows where grass cover cant re-establish quickly.
C. venosum have been able to survive the ages in low numbers, but even
small amounts of removal is now greatly increasing rapid extinction of the
most important colony. But ill make detailed posts on my research over the
last few years on another day.

Your Geissorhiza photo collection is excellent, & i never realized how
close babiana can be to Geissorhiza, although the differences are many when
we look closely. Its easy to see they have evolved to attract the fly, with
a bold red dish of delight in a dazzling ring of blue & hints of white. If
i was a fly or maybe a beetle id be in for a look too.

It would be interesting to know, if the area in general has lesser
populations of butterflies & moths ?
And would be intrigued to know if there is any notable fragrance or perhaps
any odor ?

Again with Australian Desert Crinums here in Queensland we smell delightful
strong musky jasmine fragrances where we have a high predominance of small
native stingless bees, butterflies & hawk moths, but as we cross the desert
toward South Australia, the fragrance disappears & becomes a somewhat cat
like uric odor, although there is still a hint of fragrance on a lite
breeze. Here flies & beetles can be common pollinators. I wonder if you
find a similar pollinator comparison with the Geissorhiza & Babiana, which
from memory don't have much fragrance over all ?

Enjoy the rest of your studies & tank you for sharing!
Steven Hart
Queensland Australia

On 28 September 2017 at 07:06, Evan Eifler <evan.eifler@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Steven : )
Esk Queensland Australia
Summer Zone 5 Winter Zone 10
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