[pbs] Bulbine
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Tue Sep 19 10:40:49 EDT 2006
Dear Linda,
There are a lot of Bulbine species so I think it would be really
challenging to know for sure the identity of your plant. There are
Australian species as well as South African species. Some of them are
bulbous and some of them are not. Going to South African is good for making
you lose your confidence about identifying plants because there are just so
many that look alike and because they have so many species of a lot of
genera. You may see something and think you know what it is only to search
your books and find out you didn't check out the margins of the leaves or
looked at the bracts or the corms or got your hand lens out to figure out
whether the filaments curve over the ovary or wrap around backwards or are
5 mm or 7 mm. I was with experts and even they were puzzled at times. I
finally started referring to the white Ornithogalums as DWOs after we
struggled with figuring out the difference between O. thrysoides and O.
conicum (the inner stamens with winged expansions in the lower half that
are strongly eared above and curved inward over the ovary versus the inner
stamens ovate or expanded below but then with the lower expansion squared
above and not curved inward over the ovary.) I'd be happy to share some
close ups of some of the pictures we took of these plants if anyone can
figure out what this means. Maybe pointing your dna meter would be easier
after all.
But I digress. Cameron McMaster has a whole lot of Bulbine pictures on his
CD but I haven't added them to the wiki as I'm not sure which qualify for
our group. Some are annuals, some are perennials, and some are geophytes. I
have grown an annual Australian one that was identified as B. semi-barbata
I think. It produced hundreds of seeds and was very easy, but I think I
finally stopped growing it. I think it might have lived longer than a year
with care, but I can't remember. And I have grown B. bulbosa which is also
Australian, but a geophyte and is now dormant and I'm not sure if it is
supposed to be. I never got around to adding it to the wiki but it should
qualify and I grow Bulbine frutescens which came when someone ripped out a
piece to give me which as Jim points out is an easy way to propagate. In
California it spreads rather aggressively I'm afraid. We saw lots and lots
of Bulbines on our trip to South Africa and we photographed many of them,
but didn't feel confident of IDs of most of them. There is one called B.
torta with nice curly linear leaves that is geophytic and if any of our
pictures of it as wiki worthy I'll add one.
Mary Sue
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