Barnardia
Mary Sue Ittner (Sun, 03 Sep 2017 12:10:33 PDT)

I've grown plants to flower from NARGS seed labeled Scilla scilloides
that I understood had become Scilla japonica and then Barnardia
japonica. It had an unusual growth habit. I succumbed to NARGS seed of
Barnardia numidica a couple of years ago and since it also had a similar
growth habit and looks similar I wondered what B. numidica is supposed
to look like. The only images I could find in brief searching looked
similar and I couldn't find much at all about Barnardia numidica except
for a paper that said :

"Barnardia numidica is distributed in northern Africa and the Balearic
Islands. However, it is now believed that B. numidica is not related to
Barnardia (data not shown) and should be transferred to a genus of its own."

Something from North Africa one would think would not look like
something from China and Japan. I vaguely remembered Jane McGary once
wrote about the growth habit of her Scilla scilloides and so this
morning I searched our list and found this quote from Jane from 2003
when I asked her what the growth habit was supposed to be of Scilla
scilloides.

I don't know what it is SUPPOSED to do, but what it does here is grow
anywhere I put it, whether it gets water in summer or not, and flowers
usually in late August to September. The leaves seem to grow twice --
once in the fall and once in the spring. I have had it for many years
(like many other American gardeners, I bought it under the mistaken
name "S. numidica," which is a real name of a very rare plant).

I wish I had remembered the part about it being misnamed in seed
exchanges. So I probably have what I had before. There are photos on the
Internet but are they correctly named? Does anyone have any information
about the real Barardia numidica?

I found this:

http://plantillustrations.org/illustration.php/…

but it doesn't really help me. It would be nice to know how the two differ.

Mary Sue

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