Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:44:10 +0000 From: Phil Wilson <cp@pwilson.demon.co.uk> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg592$foo@default> Subject: Re: blue/gray flava
Hi,
The plant which Peter refers to in "The Savage Garden" was indeed
originally named by Adrian Slack in his book, "Insect Eating Plants and
How to Grow Them". There is a very good picture on page 7.
The plant has no correct name. It has never been published according to
the international rules of naming (difficult since Adrian selected the
plant some thirty years before the rules were drafted) and as has
already been pointed out, Latin names are not allowed for cultivars.
Hopefully at some point this will be rectified.
Adrian apparently claimed that the plant was brought over to the UK on
the Queen Mary - I assume he was referring to the ship rather than the
monarch, but I can't be certain on that point! At any rate the plant
would appear to have been in cultivation in Europe for a considerable
amount of time.
The plant is certainly unique in appearance. I have never seen another
plant which even comes close to it. Slack himself describes the plant
thus. "..the pitchers are well formed and large, usually about 75cm tall
or more. The upper part of the pitcher and the lid are golden-green, the
latter being semi-circular with hardly any spur, and lightly veined and
blotched with maroon within, while the lower part of the pitcher and the
phyllodes have a characteristic blue-grey tint."
I would class the plant as S. flava var. flava. In my opinion the
uniqueness of the plant is principally in the shape of the lid, which
as Slack states, are quite rounded and are relatively small in
comparison to the pitcher mouth size.
>
><< In "The Savage Garden", Peter says something about Slack's "incorrectly
> named" cultivar S. flava "Maxima" with blue/gray coloring in the lower
> pitchers. What is the correct name? Is it really just a cultivar or
> just a characteristic of a locality? I ask because I have a S. flava
> grown from seed that originated from Walton County, Florida, and it
> shows this same blue/gray coloring in the lower pitchers. The pitchers
> are very stocky and shorter than my other flavas, but the rhizome is
> much larger. It's still a young plant though (maybe 4 years old), so
> it's hard to tell how tall it will eventually get.
>
> John Green
> Salt Lake City, Utah >>
Phil Wilson
Email: cp@pwilson.demon.co.uk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:06 PST