My Phyteuma is not vagneri

Submitted by Broekhuis on Thu, 06/06/2013 - 19:39

I grew plants from seed for "Phyteuma vagneri" from the 2011/2012 seed exchange (both last year and this year). Last year's plants are now blooming, and it's pretty obvious that they are not P. vagneri (at least, not if the image here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30234930@N08/4854181933/ (among others) is a good representation of the species. My plants look more like the P. scheuchzeri and P. orbiculare that I've grown previously (I no longer have them, so cannot compare them directly).
Any pointers on how to identify my plants? They're pretty enough, although I'm still hoping for the dramatic deep violet ones one of these days.

Comments


Submitted by RickR on Thu, 06/06/2013 - 22:47

I've grown supposed P. orbiculata, P. scheuzeri, P. sieberi and the imposter of P. vagneri, too.  While I suppose there are minor differences between these (that I have grown, at least), I don't see any real delineating features.  Perhaps you can help me out, Rob?

Pp. orbiculata, scheuzeri, sieberi
               

P. orbiculata and P. sieberi
   


Submitted by Broekhuis on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 18:03

I wish I had a good handle on the IDs of the phyteumas I've grown. My two pages at
http://www.robsplants.com/plants/PhyteOrbic and
http://www.robsplants.com/plants/PhyteScheu
appear to point out a difference or two - but those may be due to differences in culture or maturity of the plants when I photographed them - and then, I can't even be sure that those were the correct species, since all of them came from traded seed. For some reason, my P. spicatum and P. nigrum have never survived a full season, so I never saw flowers on those, from several attempts.