Looking for Plant ID
- Subject: Looking for Plant ID
- From: Tony and Moira Ryan t*@xtra.co.nz
- Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 10:46:51 +1300
Krzysztof Kozminski wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 03:08 PM, Tony and Moira Ryan wrote:
>
> > Orthrosanthus laxus
>
> I looked for photos of Orthrosanthus laxus on the web, and could not
> find a good match. Flowers of O.laxus from
>
> http://www.anbg.gov.au/gallery/orthrosanthus-laxus.html
>
> seem to be much bigger than what I have. Photos found here:
> http://tinyurl.com/5teg also do not match well, and neither do the
> plant characteristics, claiming "each stalk having up to five flowers
> on it" (twenty would be more like it) or height up to 75cm (about 40cm
> is the height of my plant).
>
> However, this page:
>
> http://homepages.picknowl.com.au/lharvey/default.htm
>
> has a photo of Orthrosanthus polystachyus, the flowers of which seem to
> be a perfect match to mine, also in relation to the leaf/stem size. The
> photo itself is here:
>
> http://homepages.picknowl.com.au/lharvey/photos/01529H.jpg
>
> What do you think?
Well I think it is most probably some species of Orthrosanthus, but I am
only myself familar with the two Australian species which I mentioned. I
must say I am surprised at O laxus being described as having only 5
flowers open at once. My recollection of the one growing in my garden is
that it often has more. Unfortunately it has long finished flowering
for this year so I can't be sure.
Provisionally then, in the absence of personal knowledge of any but the
two Australian species I would certainly be pretty happy about the
genus, but unsure about the species.
I was most interested to see a note from Briget Lamp just this morning
suggesting O chimboracensis, which seems to confirm we are anyway on the
right track. I don't know where O.polystachia comes from but
O. chimmboracensis Brigit says is from Mexico/Central America and it
seems most likely to me that American species would be more likely to
come your way than Australian ones.
As I said before, a pic. of the fruiting head would be useful in helping
to confirm at least it is not Aristea, as they are very distinctly
different.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
