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nicotianas & solanums

A short note very long on thank-yous.

Thanks to Holly and Eric and Gordon for more info. on Nicotiana glauca
and its nasty habits (elsewhere if not here). Holly: I confess I'm
surprised there's no record of Goodspeed's collections of the
red-flowered form at UCal, since the expeditions he's writing about
were UCal sponsored. Wouldn't he have provided at least herbarium
specimens of such an unusual form? I'd sort of assumed that the
breeding and selection programme he talks about was done AT UCal but I
suppose if there's no record of it it must have been done as a piece
of private research/fun and - unless the second or third generation of
Goodspeeds are somewhere treasuring dad or grandad's old plants as
family heirlooms! -, I guess we've hit the wall on that one, at least
for the moment.

Thanks to Tim and Jane and Bob for more on solanums. Tim: I don't know
the Metcalf book; will certainly try to track it down. Meanwhile, I'll
ask my seed-source for HIS source for the S.a. latifolium name. He's
not a man to throw names around lightly so I imagine he has an
authority for it. Certainly, from a gardener's if not a taxonomist's
point of view, it would make sense to have such a  wildly changeable
species broken up into ssp or varietal divisions. Then at least you'd
have some notion of whether what you're growing is going to become a
big bold-leaved plant with shy pale bell-shaped flowers or a
dramatically cut-leaved plant with showy flat purple flowers -
differences which do tend to matter somewhat, at least if you're the
sort of gardener who plans out his or her 'schemes'. (The answer is,
No, I'm not; but I still like to have as clear a notion in advance as
I can of what a plant's going to turn into.) Jane (hallo and good to
hear from you again): thanks for the info. on more solanums to make a
fool of myself (and my garden) over during the coming season. I'll
certainly (with thanks to Bob for the url address) have a look at that
seed company. I'd already made a note of your Purple People Eating
Solanum from Nancy's description and was going to ask her if she had
seed to spare. Incidentally, this last season a London nurseryman was
selling flowering-and-fruiting-sized plants of S. quitoense for 115
pounds sterling per plant! I don't, though, know how many of them he
actually SOLD at that price - so don't all rush for a packet of seed
at once, thinking you're going to make your fortunes...

Finally, since Moira Ryan in New Zealand's neice in Cumbrian Ulverston
is now followed by Gordon Walker in France's Workington in Cumbria
birthplace - and since I know that Jane Stanley in Ireland has her own
Cumbrian connections -, how about Cumbria as the unlikely alternative
to California  as World's Medit-Gardening Capital?! 

Tim Longville
Celia Eddy
celia@eddy.u-net.com
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