>There is also the possibility that plants A, B, and C all belong to a larger
>variable species.
>Field work. Field work. Field work.
> Barry
>
I stuck a couple of the above messages together. From my admittedly
non-botanically trained observations in the field the variations within
and across the Sarrs seem striking to me, particularly as related to
whether an individual plant is pure, is a hybrid, is a color variation
or is something in between. I guess the botanists are shuddering- I
guess there is nothing in between. But within the panhandle many sites
include leuco, flava and rubra, and then further west, alata
intermingled. In my experience there seem to be many retrograde hybrids
- individual plants with a pure heritage except for one out-species
parent a few generations back. IMHO of course, the color variations
-whether it is red veination on a flava or diffuse red in a leuco- would
seem to me to be as likely to be derived from some distant "species
impurity" as it would from some unique sub population of "pure" plants
that have interbred enough to stabilize a characteristic. To support
this, It seems that with purpurea, minor and ps
Tom in Fl