[pbs] Sparaxis
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Sat May 5 23:23:44 EDT 2007
Hi,
I've added a number of Sparaxis pictures to the wiki of plants we saw in
South Africa in September. There were wonderful Sparaxis elegans and S.
tricolor blooming near Nieuwoudtville. We also saw Sparaxis bulbifera on
our trip from Cape Town to Darling. It's a little challenging to tell it
apart from the white Sparaxis grandiflora (ssp. fimbriata) we saw at Lion's
Head, but the former has stems that are branched. We saw the yellow form of
S. grandiflora (ssp. acutiloba) driving from Clanwilliam to Citrusdal and
what I think was Sparaxis metelerkampiae near Clanwilliam. There was a pot
of S. variegata in the Karoo Desert Botanical Garden too. I've also added
some more hybrid pictures to the Sparaxis hybrid page.
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Sparaxis
Sparaxis continue to be very happy in my garden. I tried to dig all of them
out a couple of years in a row when some appeared with breaks in the petal
color, a sign of virus. I must not have gotten all of them as more have
appeared in some of the cleared out patches. If the ones left are virused,
they certainly are vigorous in spite of that. It seems like a losing
battle. I'm very ambivalent about this since I find them so cheerful and
bright that I hate to have to keep trying to get rid of them so now I just
dig any that look like there is a color break in the leaves when they first
emerge or the flowers once they bloom.
Mary Sue
More information about the pbs
mailing list