Is this Triteleia laxa or Brodiaea californica?

Mary Sue Ittner via pbs pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Wed, 06 May 2020 10:47:17 PDT
The easiest way to tell Triteleia apart from Brodiaea and Dichelostemma 
is to look at the stamens. In almost all of the species Brodiaea has 
what they call staminodes or false stamens, usually three, and these are 
important in telling the species apart. They only have 3 stamens. 
Trieleia species have six. Dichelostemma  if you exclude D. capitatum 
also has 3 stamens. Jepson has a key for the Brodiaea species here:

https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/…

I've tried to use it to identify what I used to grow from the Robinetts 
that has been elevated from B. californica ssp. leptandra to B. 
leptandra. In the past that was just a smaller plant so it was easy. It  
just doesn't fit the key anymore. Every year when it flowers I try to 
sort it out, but then get busy. Preston has created a lot of new 
species. I think there is huge variation in the wild and all these 
splits into new species makes it more and more likely for some of us to 
say, it's a Brodiaea and leave at that. So many of the species are 
determined partly by where they grow and for those of us who have grown 
plants from seed that may be many generations old don't always have that 
information. I agree that your first one looks like B. californica and 
the second is a Brodiaea as well. You can see if you can figure out 
which one from the key. Sometimes you have to pull the flowers apart to 
figure it out (where the stamens are attached is significant for some of 
the species in the "Brodiaea complex". ) Richard Haard took apart some 
of the flowers he was growing and took photos we added to the wiki so 
you could see what they are talking about. That might be a good project 
for you.

Mary Sue


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