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Medit: Mislabeled seeds (was lavender lady?)

Sheryl Williams wrote:

>Well, I finally found it - in "Weeds of the West". It's Yellow toadflax -
>scrophulariaceae and it's
>agressive. I guess I won't plant it out into the garden. I have 4 more
>seedlings growing and I'll have
>to see what they are. I hate it when you get mislabeled seeds.

Me too, although I like the challenge of identifying the resulting plant!

When my sister got married, she gave packets of forget-me-nots as favors to
all the wedding guests. As there were a number of packets left over, I
ended up scattering a number of packets in my back yard. Not a single
forget-me-not came up, just plants with wide hairy heart-shaped leaves. I
left them alone that year to see what developed, and the next year,
purple-magenta and white flowers--obviously from the mustard
family--appeared on stalks two feet tall. It wasn't until the flowers went
to seed that I finally figured out what the mystery plants were: Lunaria,
a.k.a Honesty or Money Plant for its silver-dollar like seedpods, used in
dried arrangements. They may not have been forget-me-nots, but I haven't
forgotten them!

More recently, I was given a plant by a friend, who said it was an iris
douglasiana (a local native iris). It seemed a little too upright for that
sort of iris, but I figured I'd go ahead and plant it. This spring, a
flower stalk rose out of the foliage that looked distinctly un-iris
douglasiana-like. Eventually, small blue flowers--three sepals, three
petals--appeared on the branching flower stalk. My guess was that it was in
the iris family, but not an iris or sisyrinchium. I talked to my friend,
and he thought maybe he'd given me something he called Astraea instead,
which he said was a native of New Zealand flax. A search for Astraea on the
'net brought up nothing but...seashells? However, I'd found this neat page
on the International Bulb Society website that listed all genuses
(genusii?) of "geophytic plants" (bulbs, etc., I guess). One genus listed
was Aristea, and I thought, "Maybe he mixed up the name a bit." A search on
Aristea brought up a photo of A. ecklonii, which matched my mystery flower.
Success! :)

(IBS page with photos of bulbs:
http://www.bulbsociety.com/GALLERY_OF_THE_WORLD%27S_BULBS/gallerytable.html)
(Photo of Aristea ecklonii: http://137.99.27.105/acc_num\860076.htm)

Anyone else have a detective story?

Cheryl (another one!)


@--,--`----

Cheryl Renshaw
Santa Clara, California (Silicon Valley)
USDA Zone 9/10, Sunset Zone 15
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