Allium 2010

[TheOnionMan]

After coming back from our trip to Scotland it was nice to see these plants in flower here
               
Allium thunbergii var. Ozawa                       
 

Luit, your Allium has foliage that is thinner and more thready than typical for A. thunbergii 'Ozawa'; your plant looking like a very nice deep-color form of what goes around as A. virgunculae.  Plants under that name are generally much smaller, with thready foliage, nearly terete foliage, and more open heads with fewer flowers.  Although, there are some dwarf forms of A. thunbergii that can blue the lines between the species.  I believe A. thunbergii 'Ozawa' is a taller growing plant with broader long foliage, and with denser heads of bloom.  Mine are just coming into flower, so a photo of the flowers, then a photo showing a cross-section of the leaves... they should be hollow and 3-sided... almost triangular, and lastly a seedling from A. thunbergii 'Ozawa' that looks much like Ozawa, but is in full flower growing in a warmer part of the yard.  But your plant is a sweet little allium indeed, very nice.

[Lvandelft]

After coming back from our trip to Scotland it was nice to see these plants in flower here
                
Allium thunbergii var. Ozawa                        
  

Luit, your Allium has foliage that is thinner and more thready than typical for A. thunbergii 'Ozawa'; your plant looking like a very nice deep-color form of what goes around as A. virgunculae.  Plants under that name are generally much smaller, with thready foliage, nearly terete foliage, and more open heads with fewer flowers.  Although, there are some dwarf forms of A. thunbergii that can blue the lines between the species.  I believe A. thunbergii 'Ozawa' is a taller growing plant with broader long foliage, and with denser heads of bloom.  Mine are just coming into flower, so a photo of the flowers, then a photo showing a cross-section of the leaves... they should be hollow and 3-sided... almost triangular, and lastly a seedling from A. thunbergii 'Ozawa' that looks much like Ozawa, but is in full flower growing in a warmer part of the yard.  But your plant is a sweet little allium indeed, very nice.

Thanks for your input Mark.
I am almost sure that my plant originally came from GB. You may be right in assuming that the name is wrong, as I don’t know much about the naming of Allium.
But I have done some research and found the following notes in catalogues.
The first is from Desirable plants in S. England which fits probably to my plant?:

Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’
A tiny, easy, gently clumping species with tight little clusters of bright pink-purple flowers, with long protruding stamens, among ultrafine dark green leaves. At home in the rock garden, a safe little front-of-border corner, or on the AGS showbench for that matter. One of the plants that helps make September my happiest month.

Then I found this description of a plant by Lost Horizons.ca but without color description

Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' (dwarf form)
A charming very late blooming small onion that is only half the size of what is normally sold in the trade. We had this years ago and lost it but thankfully Kirk Zufelt propagated it and gave it back to us.[Alliaceae] [Garden origin] [z5] [Full sun] [1 gal] [15 cm (6") / 15 cm (6")]

By Google I found this website of Allium virgunculae var. kiiense

http://hanamist.sakura.ne.jp/flower/tansiyo/yuri/kiito.html
This looks strongly like my plant too.

Last but not least I found in the AGS Bulletin Vol 68; Nr. 1, pp 136 an article by Brian Mathew about Allium.
He writes the following:

In terms of plant introductions, the Japanese A. virgunculae is a comparative newcomer but is already well-known and much appreciated for its white or pale pink autumn flowers. It seems to do well in a raised gritty bed if sheltered, but is best seen in the alpine house. Also autumnal and Japanese is the clump-forming purple-red A. thunbergii and its even richer version ‘Ozawa’. Here in Surrey this has proved rather tougher outside than A. virgunculae and is to be higly recommended for its showy flowers with their extremely prominent stamens and foliage that remains a fresh deep green at flowering time.

I am still trying to trace where my plant came from but after reading the above last lines, I see at the moment no reason to change the name.





Maybe this part of the page might be better at home in the Allium thread? - edit: moved to allium thread from Flowering Now in the Northern Hemisphere. Maggi 

[TheOnionMan]

Luit, I agree, maybe this should be moved to the Allium thread.

Interesting stuff Luit, I will peruse the info in more detail tonight.  Allium thunbergii should have 3-angled subfistulose leaves as in my photo, so I wonder what a cross-section through the leaves on your plant are like... could you take a photo? 

Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' (sometimes seen with the misspelling 'Ozoke') was brought to the USA from Japan by George Schenk decades ago, named after the person who selected this form.  George lived near Seattle, Washington, USA (Bothel, WA), and his original plants made they way to Bob Putnam, a well known grower/nurseryman in the next town over, Kirkland WA.  I brought my plants from Bob Putnam in the early 1980s when I moved to the area, my plants shown previously are the same original source.  Here's a photo link taken in John Lonsdale's, one a few leaves you can see the central ridge (the leaves are channeled, and hollow).  I notice that some nurseries are selling Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' - dwarf form, which is probably another allium altogether... seems kind of silly to knowingly retain a cultivar name on something that obviously differs from the cultivar.
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/Allium/Allium_thunbergii_Ozawa1_JL.jpg

I think you're on to something with the Allium virgunculae var. kiiense link... fascinating.  My only regret is that I once grew about 10 forms of virgunculae, some imported from Kazuo Mori in Japan, and as well, he had given me some "Allium sp. nova" alliums collected on one of the Japanese Islands, possible one of the several (3) A. virgunculae varieties that have been described some 20 years later or more, but after several house moves (2 being cross-country house moves) I no longer have any of those little fall bloomers, they're all so cute. More on this later.

Maggi:  I posted and see that Luit's post must have been moved in the interim.  Can you move mine to Allium 2010 thread too?  Thanks.

Edit: Ooops, I must have been moving the other posts as you were making this one, McMark.... all reunited now!  Maggi

[Stephenb]

Ozawa: This is another of my failures - received seed from NARGS in 2007, it bloomed in mid-summer 2009 (=not thunbergii, a late bloomer), don't think I decided what it is though...

[TheOnionMan]

Ozawa: This is another of my failures - received seed from NARGS in 2007, it bloomed in mid-summer 2009 (=not thunbergii, a late bloomer), don't think I decided what it is though...

Stephen, in some years I actually get seed set, but only in years where the autumn is milder and drier than normal, as lots of cold, freezing, snow and rain can turn the late-developing capsules to mush.  If the seed capsules stay intact far enough along in the season, then at some point I can pick the stems (probably in December) and actually harvest seed.  I'll try and get some off the A. thunbergii pictured above (a seedling from 'Ozawa') which grows particularly robust.

[TheOnionMan]

Luit, back to your plant, I do believe it is A. virgunculae, or one of the three varieties of virgunculae.  The dwarf stature, the fewer-flowered heads, and extra narrow thready leaves which appear terete or semi-terete (versus broader and trigonous or triangle-shaped in cross-section and hollow as in A. thunbergii), are all trademark characteristics of A. virgunculae.

The three A. virgunculae varieties are:
var. kiiense (the combination first published in 1972, but published as its own species, A. kiiense in 2009)
var. koshikiense (published 2009)
var. yakushimense (published 1998)

All of this represents new taxonomic discovery, no wonder the varieties are missing from the Nomenclature Alliorum compendium, although there should have been an entry for A. virgunculae var. kiiense since it was published well before the 1998 publish date of that Allium name list.  All varieties are endangered species. 

There is a recent publication on these entitled: A Taxonomic Revision of the Allium virgunculae Complex (Alliaceae), Acta phytotaxonomica et geobotanica 60(2), 79-86, 2009-09-30, http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110007482280
The trouble is, it isn't even available for purchase, the link to this 2009 publication says "This article is not available for up to 2 year(s) after issue by the Academic Society's policy. Thank you for your patience".

The only thing I've found so far, are distribution maps for the type species and the three varieties, which I assembled into a rectangular image that I uploaded, or use the following link:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.jpnrdb.com/search.php%3Fmode%3Dkind%26q%3D06%26pageID%3D15%26t%3Df%26cd%3D0605008%26disp%3Dthumb%26s%3Dcld&ei=1nS_TPbOJsWclgf6-rnkBw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CEcQ7gEwCA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DAllium%2Bvirgunculae%2Bvar.%2Bkoshikiense%26hl%3Den%26prmd%3Div

[TheOnionMan]

Thanks to Luit's link to Allium virgunculae var. kiiense, one can take a nice diversion onto a page of Japanese plants at:
http://hanamist.sakura.ne.jp/flower/tansiyo/yuri.html
Some of the Tricytris, Veratrum, Fritillaria, are worth feasting your eyes upon.

The genus names are listed on the left side, and to the right a list of clickable links, each for a species in that genus.  You have to click each Japanese-text link to see what species they are, but I discovered good pics of plants I have not seen photos of before.

For Allium, there is a link for A. pseudojaponicum, one that I've not seen before, although Nomenclature Alliorum puts this in synonymy with A. thunbergii:
http://hanamist.sakura.ne.jp/flower/tansiyo/yuri/tamamura.html

Having grown a number of these Japanese allium in the past decades, particularly the thunbergii-sacculiferum-virgunculae-chinense confusing fall blooming clan, I was convinced that someone needs to work on reevaluating the taxonomy on them and provide an updated revision or overview of the species, so it's good to at long last learn that at least the "virgunculae" complex has been recently updated.

Photo of distribution maps of 3 more Japanese species (pseudojaponicum, austrokyushuense, and thunbergii) is uploaded:

[TheOnionMan]

My main planting of Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' is at peak now (the white thunbergii forms flower a tad later).

[Stephenb]

Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you're trying...

I hope the Allium I've been waiting on (for you) hasn't turned to mush - it's been down to -6C and not gone above zero all day and cold weather forecast for the next week (I'll have to attempt a rescue)...

[Stephenb]

Bottom left is Kew Garden's Allium virgunculae "Hirato White"

[Lvandelft]

Today I made some photos again, a close-up of a flower and some of the stems, which are almost round
and just on one side a little square-edged and they are not hollow.
It would be good if there is someone who made pictures at shows in GB of the OZAWA plant during the last years.

[TheOnionMan]

Today I made some photos again, a close-up of a flower and some of the stems, which are almost round
and just on one side a little square-edged and they are not hollow.
It would be good if there is someone who made pictures at shows in GB of the OZAWA plant during the last years.

Excellent Luit, the foliage is just as I expected... almost round in cross-section but typically with a small flat or angular plane, and solid. I would be comfortable calling that A. virgunculae.  In fact, it's actually a much rarer entity compared to the rather common thunbergii 'Ozawa', one rarely sees Allium virgunculae anymore. And it's an excellent color form as well.  Then, if we could get our hands on the recent taxonomic paper that describes the 3 varieties of A. virgunculae, possibly your plant could be narrowed into one of those, or stay where it fits as pure A. virgunculae.  Thanks for supplying the close-up views.

Stephen, I grew the white Allium virgunculae (didn't have a cultivar name then) many years ago from bulbs I imported from Kazuo Mori in Japan, although it never bulked up into a good clump like the one you photographed in bud.  I see in your photo, that Mexican Allium glandulosum with red flowers is in the pot next to the white virgunculae.

[fermi de Sousa]

A couple of spring onions  in our rock gardens!
Allium cristophii ( is it really spelled without the 'h' after the 'c', Mark?) just starting


And what I got as Allium acuminatum from a Seedex, but is it really A. murrayanum???


cheers
fermi

[Stephenb]

Stephen, I grew the white Allium virgunculae (didn't have a cultivar name then) many years ago from bulbs I imported from Kazuo Mori in Japan, although it never bulked up into a good clump like the one you photographed in bud.  I see in your photo, that Mexican Allium glandulosum with red flowers is in the pot next to the white virgunculae.

Well spotted, Mark - I was going to mention it but forgot.... You didn't get the one at the back? It's thunbergii....

[Diane Clement]

Allium cristophii ( is it really spelled without the 'h' after the 'c', Mark?) ...And what I got as Allium acuminatum from a Seedex, but is it really A. murrayanum???   cheers   fermi   

Not sure on the IDs, but I'm sure that McMark will know  
However, I do know that A cristophii is spelled like that and A murrayanum is a synonym for A acuminatum.