Chinese Maianthemum headache... Aaron?

[arisaema]

Could someone please help me with a name for this plant? It was received from Edrom as Smilacina oleracea, but according to the key in FoC it cannot be that species, as the style is shorter than the ovary.

The plant is 18cm tall, stem and rachis are reddish with white pubescense. Leaves are glabrous on both surfaces, largest leaf is 10cm long x 4cm wide. Leaf stems clasping (?), 1cm. Inflorescense 3cm long, branched. Pedicel 4-5mm, white pubescent. Flower white, campanulate, 10mm wide. Petals free, 6mm long x 5mm wide; sepals (?) 6mm long x 3mm wide. Ovary green, ~2mm; style ~1mm; filaments ~3mm; anthers yellow.

[arisaema]

Could it be an Indian species?

[Lesley Cox]

I can't help with ID but what a lovely plant!

[art600]

Where can I buy one

[arisaema]

It is lovely, I got it from Edrom Nurseries, but think it is identical to this one from Crûg Farm.

They list it as having been collected on the Singalila Ridge in West Bengal, could the style length really differ that much in Indian and Chinese plants?

[Afloden]

Hello,

  I would say that it is M. purpurea! Strangely enough purpurea has white flowers sometimes tinged with purple. The two seem very close, but there are minor filament details, branching of the inflorescence, style length as you pointed out, and a few other minor things. It should also be sweetly scented from the one plant I grew that flowered and died.

 Hope that helps.

 And yes it is a lovely plant that looks really happy. The flowers look fairly large also. So much nicer than M.racemosa, or Smilacina racemosa as the most recent molecular (2007) work has once again suggested.

 Aaron Floden
 Knoxville, TN

[arisaema]

Thank you, that helps a lot, I had looked myself blind on the key! There's another five or six unidentified species from NW Yunnan, but unfortunately none have flowered yet, so I may have to ask for some more help next spring

Is it likely that all the former Smilacinas will move back to their own genus, or only S. racemosa?

[Diane Clement]

Is it likely that all the former Smilacinas will move back to their own genus, or only S. racemosa?

All members of the genus Smilacina have now been taken into Maianthemum. 

[Afloden]

 A recent (2007-8) paper on the molecular phylogeny of Maianthemum has shown that the two are separate besides the fact that Maianthemum is dimerous and Smilacina is trimerous. Maianthemum are all most two leaved while Smilacina is three or more.

 That is the beauty of taxonomy. It is always changing as people come to understand things better. Yet, LaFrankie's work was done in the 80's and only in the late 90's did people start calling Smilacina Maianthemum.

 Paper: Generic delimitation and biogeography of Maianthemum
           and Smilacina (Ruscaceae sensu lato): preliminary results based
           on partial 3¢ matK gene and trnK 3¢ intron sequences of cpDNA
           S.-C. Kim1 and N. S. Lee2
 
 Aaron Floden
 Knoxville, TN

[arisaema]

Typical of both gardeners and taxonomy, when we finally catch up with the changes there's a new paper published... Thanks for the reference!