Erythronium

[Afloden]

Hello,
 
 Here are a few of the lesser known and seen eastern NA species of Erythronium. Both of the 'other' yellow ones are far better than E. americanum which sends out numerous droppers each year. Erythronium umbilicatum never produces droppers, but immature E. rostratum does produce 1-3 per bulb. E. rostratum has the added bonus of outward facing flowers that follow the sun with a light to heavy fragrance in some forms. Erythronium rostratum has a beak on the seed pod, and umbilicatum has an umbilical cord that dries about the time the seed begins to ripen (photos soon). In habitat that is about the second weekend in April. Erythronium mesochoreum is a better version of E. albidum that flowers reliably every year with no droppers. It sometimes has a heavy fragrance similar to Lilium speciosum. It can be found in the prairie in extremely large numbers sometimes and also dry oak woods.

 1) E. mesochoreum with yellow/cream margined leaves.
 2) E. rostratum colony in Louisiana, much nicer garden plants (and more fragrant) than those in the western Ozarks.
 3) E.rostratum, Louisiana, clonal with extra petals/tepals
 4) E.umbilicatum clump from South Carolina
 5) E.umbilicatum from SC, & seedlings with Trillium reliquum
 6) E.umbilicatum, SC profile

[Maggi Young]

Great natural shots, Aaron. Good to have you with us!
Ian will be so pleased to see these on the forum!
Doesn't the E. umbilicatum in your fifth picture look fantastic paired with the Trillium?

[Ian Y]

I am so pleased to see these pictures Aaron, I have been trying to understand the Eastern American Erythroniums for years. My trouble is that I am mostly growing plants from cultivation as I rarely see seed of wild origin offered but I do have a few forms of E. americanum from wild seed.
It is very difficult to see the taxonomic differences in these cultivated plants, perhaps they have further hybridised in gardens adding to my confusion.
The rostratum is especially beautiful and I grow nothing like that - is it always free of the brown spots seen on the flowers on the other species?
I cannot wait to see more pictures from you, how I wish I could be there with you to study them in habitat.

[Paul T]

Aaron,

Beautiful pics.  I've never heard of a variegated Erythronium before.  Very cool.   The E. umbilicatum in particular is lovely to see.  I have seen this in books and it has become one of those "holy grail" type plants for me.  I hope to find it here in Australia or find seed somewhere one day.  The lovely leaf markings and the yellow flowers with reddish reverse really appeal to me, and I just LOVE Erythroniums.  That and E. japonicum are two I have been wanting for ages, and I was given some seed of the latter last year (by one of our lovely SRGCers) and I am waiting to see if it germinates for me this year.  If it does then I figure most of you will hear the cheer, even if you ARE on the other side of the world.  Of course it is a long way from germination to actually flowering it, but the germination bit definitely does help a lot!!!! <grin>

Again, wonderful pics.  Thanks for taking the time to post them.

First Galanthus of the year was open today.... Galanthus reginae-olgae.  I look forward to the first snowdrop every year.  This year they are a bit over a week earlier than usual (they're usually around the 14th of April).  So nice to see them in flower, even if it is "just" the autumn ones.  I love ALL of them. 

[Afloden]

Hello,
 
 I have promised some of the seed (if it ripens) to person in AU, so if I have extra, I could send some your way. There is an online document on seed germination that has been mentioned on T-L, and here I believe at some point. They germinate like grass for me. I'll send seedling pics later after school. Sadly the only western species I grow is oregonum. I have never had any from Ratko germinate, but it was many years ago that I last tried. I'll let you know how much seed I get. I am always willing to trade for things. Hyacinthaceae (Muscari, Bellevalia, Hyacinthella) are a favorite group as the are the Narcissus sect. Pseudonarcissus. And then Polygonatum, Smilacina/Maianthemum, Epimedium......

 The variegated one was found as a seedling that finally flowered three years later. I wish it had been albidum though, a carpet of that foilage would have been nice.

 I just checked on the Ozark forms of rostratum and found that they are triploid and put more into vegatative growth rather than flower production (Carr, Castanea 51:22, 73-87, 1986). The Louisiana and Texas forms are diploid and the colonies I saw last year had 75% of the plants flowering in most cases. Some were higher. From Hardin's paper on the eastern yellow species he says that there is never spotting on rostratum, but I double check my pictures of those in the garden and habitat. I seem to recall a slight amount of spotting on some.

 The capsules on the species are E.rostratum = beaked, E.americanum = round, truncate, or apiculate, E.umbilicatum
= indented (umbilicate). Hope this helps. I can send a copy of Hardins paper by post.

 Yes, Trillium look good with so many things. I grow so many Trillium and other things also. I am a hopeless addict of plants, both cultivation and study.

[Afloden]

Here are some more pic's.

 And, yes, it seems my memory is faulty, all the rostratum are spotless.

 1) 2 yr seedlings of E. rostratum from the Boston Mountains in Arkansas
 2-3) habitat and close-up of Arkansas form.

[Maggi Young]

More fine pix! The E. rostratum look very happy colonising their wood.... it is the sort of sight we would all love to recreate in our gardens, isn't it?

[ChrisB]

Isn't that a splendid sight?  I am truly in awe of such riches.  Where abouts are you located Alf?  I want to go there.....

[Ian Y]

Thanks for that further information Aaron and the offer of the Parks and Hardin Paper but I have it already.
My problem is that I have read it over and over and it does not make sense with the plants I grow leading me to believe that I do not have the correct plants and or that they have further hybridised in cultivation. Many of the diagnostic features they use such as the end shape of the seed capsules seems to vary from year to year in the same plants I have depending on climate and fertility.
I would be delighted to swop seeds of anything I have to get some wild sourced seed of the Eastern erythroniums, I can send you western seed as I grow most of those species.

[Ed Alverson]

Ian, I'm sure you would find it easier to identify your yellow eastern American erythroniums if you had the latest model of the RonCo automatic chromosome counter (it slices, dices, and counts chromosomes!). 

Serously now, the complicating factor is that E. americanum, the most familiar species of this complex, is an "allotetraploid" species that essentially combines the two genomes of the (typically) diploid E. rostratum and E. umbillicatum.  Aaron's great photos really show clearly how different E. rostratum and E. umbillicatum are from one another. 

The fomation of E. americanum came about when, some time in the past, E. rostratum and E. umbillicatum came together and hybridized, and the hybrid doubled its chromosomes to become a new fertile species, which we call E. americanum.  If you look at the distribution map in Parks and Hardin, you will see that the ranges of E. rostratum and E. umbillicatum are basically separate at the present time, E. umbillicatum occurring in and east of the Appalachians, E. rostratum occurring to the west.  However, the species could have come together in the past as plants migrated in response to climate changes.

This pattern of "reticulate evolution" is actually fairly common in the plant kingdom (Erythronium elegans and E. quinaultense arose in the same way).

Such species of hybrid origin typically express their morphology as intermediacy between the two parents, but in actuality the appearance of a particular morphological character may range from nearly like one parent, to nearly like the other parent.  Furthermore, over time there may be silencing of duplicated genes (remember, E. americanum has four copies of each chromosome, rather than the 2 copies found in a basic diploid species; often these redundant genes tend to go silent over time) that can further affect expression of morphology.

It is likely, actually, that this process of hybridization and chromosome doubling has happened multiple times over the past cycles of glacial and interglacial periods, so the species that we call E. americanum is a mixture of different populations with separate hybrid origins.  So variation in E. americanum may be due, in part, to the differing genetic influences of its parents.

Add to the the possibility that when true plants of the E. rostratum and E. umbillicatum are grown in gardens along with E. americanum, the resulting seed may actually be hybrids with E. americanum (unless special precautions are taken to prevent hybridization), I can see how your identification difficulties might come about.  Like you say, the best solution is to grow plants from correctly identified, wild collected seed.

In the mean time, you could analyze each of you yellow trout lily accessions according the the entire list of characters presented in the table in the Parks and Hardin paper, and I suspect that if you considered all of the flower and fruit characters together, you should be able to put a species name on each clone - without having to fork out all that cash for the RonCo automatic chromosome counter.

[Ed Alverson]

My apologies if the previous post was too  much technical detail.  Hopefully I can make up for it with some photos of wild-growing Erythroniums from our area.

These photos are of a nice patch of the form of Erythronium oregonum that is typically found here in the Willamette Valley.  I call it ssp. leucandrum because the tepals are cream-colored or even a bit yellowish, compared to ssp. oregonum, which has straight white tepals (above the yellow zone at the base).  However, ssp. leucandrum is "supposed" to have white anthers, which, as you can see in the close-up photo, is not true in the case of these plants.  Actually, what I typically find is that a population of the Willamette Valley form typically exhibits a range of anther color on different plants in the population, some with yellow anthers and some with cream or almost white anthers.

Such populations, which don't exactly follow the published taxonomic treatments, can be confusing to gardeners, even those who are growing plants from wild collected seed.  So, I mention this in case anyone is growing plants like this that don't exactly fit the descriptions in the books. 

If you look in "Flora of North America" as well as other recent taxonomic references, you will not see ssp. leucandrum recognized as a distinct subspecies.  However, I think it is a useful taxon, both for field botanists and for gardeners.  For example, I was in Seattle last week, and a friend showed me some nice patches of Erythronium oregonum in a fairly wild section of the University of Washington Arboretum.  It was clear to me, however, that the plants were not wild populations, but had actually been planted some time in the past, because the flower and anther color of these plants matched the form we have in the Willamette Valley, not ssp. oregonum which is the only form that occurs naturally in the Seattle area (and even there it is rare in the wild).

[Ian Y]

Thanks for that great explanation Ed, it seems the plants are confused so not much wonder I am.
I like tha idea of having a RonCo automatic chromosome counter in the shed.

I have tried to identify them using the details in  Parks and Hardin but one year I am convinced I have
worked it out and the next year I work out a different name for the same plant.

I am just going to have to come over and see them in situ then I am sure it will all make sense.

[Ed Alverson]

Sorry, I intended to attach this third photo!

If you look closely in the photo, you will see two other associated species that closely guard our Erythronium patches - poison oak (which will give you a nasty rash if you touch it), and wild blackberry, which is introduced from Europe and tends to overtake these habitats unless they are mowed or burned.  So our Erythronium habitats do not give up their secrets too easily!

[Ian Y]

Our posts are passing mid Atlantic Ed.

Great to see more of them in the wild we have plenty out in the garden now and this is what I have as E. oregonum leucandrum.
 

[Ed Alverson]

Yes Ian, your plants look like "typical" E. oregonum ssp. leucandrum from southern Oregon (especially at low elevations in Jackson or Josephine counties, as ssp. oregonum can occur at high elevations down there).  The anthers are very white, but the dialated  (flattened) anther filaments show that it is E. oregonum and not some other white-anthered species like E. californicum.  The tepals show a creamish-tinge, though this doesn't always show up in photos, depending upon the exposure.  But, as they say, the plants don't always read the books, so if you find that some of your plants of ssp. leucandrum dare to have yellow anthers, it isn't necessarily an issue of hybridization or seed mix-up, just "normal" variation in wild populations.

Back to Aaron's great photos of southeast US Erythroniums, I also would really like to get to the southeast in the spring time. From what little time I have spent in the SE (not during Erythronium season however), the flora is really diverse and interesting, partly I presume because the area was not glaciated during the Pleistocene.