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Mandrakes

Sorry to have been lurking for such a long time, but I was on a collecting 
trip in China from August 'till a few weeks ago. Absolutely no 
Mediterranean plants there, so I won't talk about that, but the mention of 
Mandrakes made me sit up and take special notice. I was reading about 
these plants recently and wondered if anyone is growing them? Apparently 
there are species other than the one(s) in the Mediterranean itself: 
Mandragora turcomanica, from the Kopet Dag (mountains) in Turkmenistan, C. 
Asia, and M. caulescens from the Himalaya and W. China. There is also some 
controversy over whether there is one or two species in the Mediterranean, 
i.e. M. officinarum and M. autumnalis, or just the former (of which the 
latter is merely a synonym). If anyone is growing the Mediterranean 
species, I'd be really interested to know your observations on its/their 
life cycle(s), i.e. when the leaves first appear after dormancy, flowering 
time, in fact whatever differences you might have observed between plants 
under these two names...

It's getting cold and wintry here in St. Louis now, but I've finally got 
an apartment I can call home, with a balcony on which I'm hoping to 
re-create the Mediterranean collection that I had in London. Somehow, I 
think the Midwestern winters might be too cold for this, but it should 
still be worth a try.

Nick.

Nick Turland
Flora of China Project, Missouri Botanical Garden, 
P.O. Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299, U.S.A.
Email: nturland@lehmann.mobot.org
Tel.: (314) 577-9556  Fax: (314) 577-9438
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