[pbs] New Moraea pictures added to the wiki
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Thu May 31 22:35:33 EDT 2007
Hi,
For Carolyn in Tasmania and anyone else interested I've added some more
Moraea pictures to the wiki. Actually I got a little carried away in adding
pictures of plants we saw in the wild in September. One of the things that
has impressed me when you start looking in the wild is the great variation
you see in species. It's rare that they match the pictures in your books.
In areas where there are species that are not the same colors you may get
combinations of those colors that also don't match the descriptions in the
books. So in a few instances I included some of the diversity.
So here's what's new in:
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/MoraeaSpeciesTwo
Moraea caeca -- new species illustrated courtesy of Alan Horstmann
Moraea calcicola -- new picture from Alan Horstmann
Moraea falcifolia -- new species illustrated courtesy of Audrey Cain and
Rod Saunders, Silverhill Seeds
Moraea fugax -- Here's the first place I got carried away. Jim McKenney
fairly recently moaned about Moraea sisyrinchium which opens mid day or
later and closes later in the day. If you aren't home you don't see it and
even if you are home you have to be looking at the right time. A lot of
Moraeas are like this and are called fugacious or short lived. Some of them
continue to bloom off and on for another 4 or 5 week once they start, but
each flower is open only briefly.
Moraea fugax is one of those species. Hence the name. Flowers open around
noon (if the weather is warm enough) or later and are gone by sunset. In
spite of that we saw it many times on our trip in many different locations.
So I first added a yellow one from Namaqualand and a white one we saw
driving from Nieuwoudtville to Clanwilliam. Most of the ones we saw have
moderately large flowers making them easier to spot. We went with Rod and
Rachel Saunders to Bainskloof and late in the day near some wonderful
Kniphofia blooming wonderfully after a fire some time before there were a
lot of M. fugax. According to the Moraea book (The Moraeas of Southern
Africa, Peter Goldblatt) chromosomal variation is particularly extensive in
the large subspecies, fugax. Flowers are yellow, blue or white. Usually
there is just one color in an area and he writes: "there is no recorded
intrapopulational variation for flower color." However if you look at my
pictures from Bainskloof you will see purple blue flowers with blue crests
and white spotted yellow nectar guides, lighter purple blue flowers with
blue crests and pale yellow marked with darker yellow nectar
guides, creamy white with light yellow crests and light yellow nectar
guides, creamy white with light blue crests and dark yellow marked gold
nectar guides, and creamy white with white crests and white nectar guides
marked with gold and darker yellow. It was reminiscent of the interesting
combinations of M. papilionacea.
In Namaqualand we saw white flowers of subspecies fugax and of a subspecies
described in the Moraea book as subspecies filicaulis. The latter is much
smaller and has two filiform leaves. Subspecies fugax usually just has one
long, trailing, channeled and linear leaf and the flowers are larger. So I
added a number of pictures of this smaller subspecies that include the
plant and the leaves so you can tell them apart. Finally we arrived at a
population of subspecies fugax not yet open and watched them "pop". We
wished we could film it happening, in time release photographs, but the
best we could do was to show the bud and have a series of pictures as the
flowers opened. The amazing thing was that minutes after the flowers
finally opened there was already a pollinator. There is also a picture of
the seed pods and some old flowers so you can see what it looks like if you
missed the flower when it bloomed.
Moraea gawleri - The next excess of pictures I added were pictures of M.
gawleri. This is a much smaller flowered species, branched, and one that I
found quite charming on earlier trips, but haven't found I could grow so it
has become somewhat less charming in my mind so I won't feel bad about
this. I've added some color variations to the wiki including the attractive
brick red form. Since even in the same area there was variation in color
(shown in the Clanwilliam pictures) I think it would be very difficult for
you to be sure that seedlings would necessarily end up the color you want.
How you'd ever mark them for the right color if you came back to collect
when the flowers are so small I can't imagine. But since I have no
survivors from seed I've tried I haven't had to worry about what color they
turned out to be.
Moraea gigandra-- another photo added from Alan Horstmann.
I promise to be more moderate on the next page.
Mary Sue
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