The MGS Forum
Plants for mediterranean gardens => Bulbs (including other geophytes with corms, tubers, rhizomes etc) => Topic started by: JTh on September 26, 2011, 09:44:58 PM
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Now I know autumn is here, the first Sternbergias have appeared both in my garden and in the wild, there are many of them around here, especially in rocky areas. You see them in many gardens in the nearest village, I am sure they have transplanted them from the wild.
I would like to get some help from the experts here, for many years I have been wondering if they are S. lutea or S. siccula (or if you wish S. lutea ssp. siccula). Arne Strid saw a photo I sent him once and said he thought they were the latter, but I am still not convinced. The flowers mostly appears first (like S. siccula), but the leaves are wider than those described for S. siccula, and the flowers are bigger, sometimes the petals are long and narrow, but quite often more rounded, with more cup-shaped flowers (see second photo). The two first photos are from the wild, the last one from my garden (wild source), these photos were taken last year, though.
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This same thing has been discussed of late at SRGC. Basically, there are so much variation in leaf width and lenght and in tepal shape and size often IN THE SAME POPULATION that those names as sicula, greuteriana, angustifolia and lutea proper only reflect an extreme situation in a given direction.
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Lovely.
FWIW, here's a patch labelled 'Sternbergia lutea ssp. sicula' in the Jardin Botanique, Geneva.
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Current taxonomic thinking now goes along with what Alberto says, and all these plants are now classified as Sternbergia lutea. It seems to me that around the Mediterranean the large-flowered showy plants we've always thought of as S. lutea are most commonly found, often in large numbers, around or not very far from human habitation, with much smaller populations found in the really wild places. The smaller-flowered ones also crop up more generally in the wilder places.
This could square up with "lutea" being selected centuries or longer ago in many places, brought home and replanted around settlements.
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Incidentally, in naturalistic plantings, the smaller varieties (or forms?) of sternbergia look to me much more at home than the large-flowered "lutea" type - just as some of the smaller crocus species look so much better than the big bright blowsy bulbs sent out in the millions by the Dutch merchants.
This is perhaps the smallest, "greuteriana", originally a couple of bulbs which came to me from Cretan stock in 1996. Often under an inch high. They bulked up in a pot just as quickly as lutea, and I've sent some to other Greek gardens including the MGS garden in Attica.
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I too am confused. I would say Joruns are S. sicula if it exists especially given her location. On Crete I am fairly convinced that S. sicula and S. greuteriana are extremes of the same species especially given the variation I have seen. S. lutea occurs on Crete in association with villages in the west. Here is a picture of true wild S. lutea originally from seed from a known definitely wild population in central Italy at quite high altitude not near human habitation. They are bigger than those known as S sicula.
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I managed to find the picture sent by my friend of the Sternbergia lutea growing in the wild in Italy.
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I think all this supports the taxonomists' current verdict that it's all one highly variable species.
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Thank you, all of you, I am tempted to agree with Alisdair, and believe that I could stick to the name S. lutea, all these are really from the wild, definitely not origianlly from the villages, it must be the other way around. There are great variations even within the same location, from longer, narrower petals to more rounded ones, but they are all rather big compaired to how I see S. siccula is described.
I am very happy to see them here, I tried to grow them many times in my garden in Norway, but never succeeded. I was very excited the first time when I saw something very bright yellow in a steep, rocky hill next to the road whereI was driving some years ago. They often seem to grow together with cyclamens, like in John's photo (C. hederifolium around here). The place I showed of sternbergias in the wild is about 5-600 m above sea level, I believe.
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They like a hot dry summer rest, hence no Norway!
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Obviously!
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Several of the gardens in Corinth have Sternbergia flowering at the moment.
This one was in the garden of an old lath and plaster house which was pulled down.
As you see the plant came up through the flattened earth.
Unfortunately this year it didn't show as the plot is covered in weeds and deep dry grass.
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Hilary, your photo is showing a lot more leaves than what I saw in Halkidiki, they had hardly started to appear when I left Greece two days ago, but the flowers had been out for a couple of weeks.
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The wild form I have of S. lutea flowers with me after the leaves have emerged!
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This was taken in the wild on Monday, not a leaf in sight there.
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Another photo of sternbergia
Seen in a garden In Kastoria, a town in the north of Greece which has a lot of snow in the winter.
Apparently it is 620 meters above sea level
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This one does look absolutely like typical S. lutea to me.
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For Ori's photo of the tiny Sternbergia colchiciflora, and also S. clusiana among other mouth-watering bulbs in bloom at the moment in Israel, after rains, click here (http://www.mgsforum.org/smf/index.php?topic=539).
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This is the tiniest sternbergia with the smallest coin in Israel. We found it blooming in Kahal (E. Galilee).
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By coincidence I took these two shots yesterday. Again this pot of S. colchiciflora hasn't flowered but gone straight into fruit production. It is bulking up well but rather pointless in my greenhouse!
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Does anybody know of an identification key for all Sternbergias ? i remember someone German eho wrote one, but that was in German.
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I found a key to Sternbergia at http://citesbulbs.myspecies.info/ which I found very interesting, lots of information here, although I have not found out how to use all of it yet. It seems as if there are only 7 recognised species today, thus I found the answer to my question in the first post I had on Sternbergia (are the ones in my area in Halkidiki S. lutea or S. siccula?) in the introduction:
Although most Sternbergia species can be differentiated by discrete taxonomic characters, S. lutea (L.) Ker Gawl. ex Spreng and allies S. siculaTineo ex Guss. and S.greuteriana Kamari & R.Artelari, have been shown to be an exception (Gage & Wilkin, 2008). A recent morphometric study by Gage & Wilkin (2008) has shown that "as a result of the continuous variation shown in leaf width, tube length and perianth segment size and shape, it is not possible to differentiate the three existing species from each other".Therefore, it was suggested that the three taxa above should be regarded as a single species, S. lutea.
So Alisdair's conclusion earlier was confirmed.
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This does seem to make sense to me. Although what I think of as typical S. lutea (which is only seemingly introduced on Crete) as a much larger plant and flower than S. sicula I always felt that the Peloponnese plants started to look more like S. lutea but again were quite variable and confused with S. sicula. So presumably throughout their natural distribution there is likely to be clinal variation.
The differences I have noticed between S. sicula and S. greuteriana on Crete also led me to this conclusion with these two i.e. that they are probably two extremes of the same species and some forms I would find difficult to allocate to either!
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thank you all
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Wow, I was going to start a new topic but when I found this one with those amazing pics from the wild I thought it would be better to revive this one!
Here are some Sternbergia lutea in flower in our garden, the first three pics are of a clump at the base of a rock garden and the last is under deciduous trees on a raised mound,
cheers
fermi
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That's a lovely patch, Fermi - as fresh as if they were on a wild Mediterranean mountain.
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Thanks, Alisdair,
they are slowly increasing and have been flowering regularly.
Here are a couple of pics of the first Sternbergia sicula to flower this year.
I hadn't noticed them coming into flower so the second pic is after I cleared away the dead dianthus foliage.
We grew these from seed from Rannweig Wallis in Wales which she said originally came from Crete.
cheers
fermi
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1) Another clump of Sternbergia sicula which is close to the Sternbergia lutea at the base of the rock garden.
2) Some of the seedlings from the Sternbergia lutea are halfway in size (on the right side of the pic) and I wonder if that's because they have crossed or if they are just smaller bulbs
cheers
fermi
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Some more pics of Sternbergia sicula this autumn in various parts of the garden
cheers
fermi
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I don't know what to think. I have been trying and waiting to get seeds of some of the variants of S. lutea and now that I've got a few seedlings up I am not sure how I feel about my earlier enthusiasm. But I do have one S. candida in its 3rd year and hope for a flower next autumn.
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Sternbergia sicula is starting to flower in the rock garden
cheers
fermi
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Sternbergia colchiciflora
In 1967 Hungary issued a seven-stamp series to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Death of Pal Kitaibel, 3rd February 1757- 13th December 1817
Sternbergia are mentioned in
A CALIFORNIAN AT SPAROZA
By Lukas Carlow
THE MEDITERRANEAN GARDEN number 87, January 2017