Not so genuine gratrixianum

[Justin]

please post more pictures they are beautiful.

 

[Rick]

I am not expert, so I would like to know more too from people in the know.

The pic I posted was taken at the Bolivan plateau in Laos. Exul comes from around Krabi Island in Thailand, so no were near these. In some ways this reminds me of insigne, but the plant is nothing like that species. I have often wondered are we really confusing different species under the name gratrixianum?

Any of us can be "experts" if we just compare pics with no reference to geography or size metrics.

As noted these guys look more like insigne or exul. This picture could be the reason that Averyanov is speculating on the range of "exul" extending outside of the Island of Krabi onto to mainland Indochina.

There are lots of villosum varieties that have flowers that look very similar to exul, insigni, gratrixianum (if all you see is the flower pic), but are very different in flower size (which will make a big difference on pollinator selection).

Despite the picture similarities, my exul and gratrixianum flowers are almost 1/2 the size of villosum flowers. So even if they looked the same in a picture they could not be mechanically pollinated by the same insect.

There are other ways to cause genetic isolation in pollination, some of which we cannot even see (like fragrance).

So given that flower taxonomy is fairly limited to visual metrics, its pretty important to know the geographic source of your plant of possible to get a handle on "what it is".


There are blondes in Italy too! So you can't say that all blondes are Swedish or German just by looking at photos.

 

[Trithor]

Whew! I thought I was alone in thinking it looked more like exul than gratrixianum. Another factor which would keep them distinct in the wild would be time of flowering. In my greenhouse the gratrixianums all flower much earlier in the season (autumn) and the exuls later (spring), and I don't think I have ever seen an overlap (not in my greenhouse in any case).

 

[Rick]

Whew! I thought I was alone in thinking it looked more like exul than gratrixianum. Another factor which would keep them distinct in the wild would be time of flowering. In my greenhouse the gratrixianums all flower much earlier in the season (autumn) and the exuls later (spring), and I don't think I have ever seen an overlap (not in my greenhouse in any case).

Yes time of year is a biggy if you don't have geography on your side.

At least with the present understanding of the exul and gratrixianum concepts, exul is geograpically isolated down in a handful of small Islands on the Maylay archipeligo (Krabi). Gratrixianum is towards the northen end of Loas or Vietnam. So even without a different season, there's enough distance to warrant separation.

Now gratrixianum versus the zillion variants of villosum?????:evil: