Podophyllum 2012

[johnw]

Green Mile's Podophyllum difforme seeds are pushing up.  I'm elated.

Hopefully I can keep this batch alive.  It seems to be a cantankerous species here and with friends in Canada.

johnw   - +6c and dreich

[Lesley Cox]

When I went to visit a friend in Ashburton a month ago, she had a pod on 'Spotty Dotty.' There may be nothing in it of course but it was fat and full-looking. The little non-pods on my own are still hanging there but have nothing in them. Some nice new leaves though.

[arisaema]

Cantankerous indeed, I've given up on it outside, it's too tender. Aaron is able to grow it down in Tennessee, and Yijia succeeds with it in Beijing, but the combination of cold and wet has killed it too many times to count here... It's evergreen inside, or at least the large, lowland Yunnanese form with spotted foliage is, the brownish leaved one from Chen Yi seems slightly more decidous. No luck with the hybrids either, but the last few winters have been unusually bad.

[johnw]

Cantankerous indeed, I've given up on it outside, it's too tender. Aaron is able to grow it down in Tennessee, and Yijia succeeds with it in Beijing, but the combination of cold and wet has killed it too many times to count here... It's evergreen inside, or at least the large, lowland Yunnanese form with spotted foliage is, the brownish leaved one from Chen Yi seems slightly more decidous. No luck with the hybrids either, but the last few winters have been unusually bad.

I've killed two and that was indoors.  They came up fine, died down suddenly, came up again and said farewell. BTW quite a few of the mariei, delavayi and pleianthum did not die down in the cold room under lights last winter.

johnw

[johnw]

When I went to visit a friend in Ashburton a month ago, she had a pod on 'Spotty Dotty.' There may be nothing in it of course but it was fat and full-looking. The little non-pods on my own are still hanging there but have nothing in them. Some nice new leaves though.

Then you had best go back and snag that fat pod.

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

She will send me half of anything eventually harvestable. I have just collected today's mail from the box (at end of road). PM to you in a few minutes.

[Stephen Vella]

I still am growing difforme but I thought I had lost it this spring(september,october).

It has been in a pot for 4 years and it did not come up last spring. All the growth and buds were all on the surface. So i decided to plant them about a month ago and the leaves came up with the rain we just had, like 3 months of rain!!

I did notice when it was in a pot there were 2 flushes of growth Spring and late summer and just in time now its in the ground. See how it does now. Looks larger than ever before but it has never flowered for me.

If its not the cold that kills it, im afraid the heat might do it.

cheer

[arisaema]

To be honest you're not missing out on much, granted these aren't well-grown, but even if they had been I would imagine them making rather ugly pot subjects...

[Lesley Cox]

Oh I don't know. Are the leaves a little burnt or malformed at the edges? If planted in the garden maybe they'd be happier do you think?

[Afloden]

 Difforme usually does this. I've even seen it on herbarium specimens, but I doubt it has to look like this. Maybe full slug protection and high, windless humidity is what it wants. I know very little of its habitat, but it responds well during the growing season to excessive, but draining moisture. Maybe, like Diphylliea, it is a creek edge plant or seep plant?

 

[johnw]

A few years ago we had a long discussion on Podophyllum species, specifically the pleianthum-versipelle-mairei (corrected spelling) complex.  Robin came to the rescue with a great series of pictures showing the differences with a nice synopsis of defining characteristics.

I discovered on the weekend that P. mairei is not in The Flora of China.  Googling P. mairei there were several sites that mentioned that mairei was a synonym for P. aurantiocaule.  I wonder what this is based on as the flower of aurantiocaule is white and mairei red.  My maireis look nothing like aurantiocaule.  Anyone?

Tony – Back in 2009 there was a long thread as we tried to identify our Podophyllums. At the time you posted a shot of your hybrid(Reply 36)  listed as #3 – see below.

http://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3472.30

It was decided at the time it might be delavayi x versipelle or x pleianthum. I have done these crosses and have never seen one with dissected leaves such as yours.  Are its sibling similar?


johnw

[Maggi Young]

You've got a typo there, John.... mairei not mariei  

From the Kew Plant List:
Podophyllum mairei Gagnep. is a synonym of Dysosma aurantiocaulis (Hand.-Mazz.) Hu

The record derives from Tropicos which reports it as a synonym (record 50273558) with original publication details: Bull. Soc. Bot. France 85: 167 167 1938.

Dysosma aurantiocaulis in Flora of China online:

http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=250096284

4. Dysosma aurantiocaulis (Handel-Mazzetti) Hu, Bull. Fan Mem. Inst. Biol., Bot. 8: 37. 1937.

云南八角莲 yun nan ba jiao lian

Podophyllum aurantiocaule Handel-Mazzetti, Anz. Akad. Wiss. Wien, Math.-Naturwiss. Kl. 61: 163. 1924; Dysosma furfuracea S. Y. Bao; D. mairei (Gagnepain) Hiroe; P. aurantiocaule subsp. furfuraceum (S. Y. Bao) J. M. H. Shaw; P. mairei Gagnepain; P. sikkimense R. Chatterjee & Mukerjee; P. sikkimense var. majus R. Chatterjee & Mukerjee.

Plants 30-50 cm tall. Rhizomes brown, short, stout, with numerous fibrous roots. Stems erect, pale stramineous, 3-5 mm in diam., angulate, glabrous. Leaves alternate; petiole of lower leaves 12-22 cm, petiole of upper leaves 3-7 cm, all petioles angulate; leaf blade abaxially pale green, adaxially deep green, suborbicular or reniform in gross outline, sharply diversiform, 7-8 × 13-15 cm, thinly papery, abaxially on veins scurfy squamulate, sometimes mixed pubescent, adaxially glabrous, 5-8-lobed, lobe margin scarcely inconspicuously serrulate. Inflorescence 2-5-fascicled flowers. Pedicel nutant, 3-6 cm, glabrous. Flowers attached far from base of blade, purple or pink. Sepals narrowly oblong, 10-12 × 4-5 mm, glabrous. Petals obovate or suborbicular, 1.4-1.6 × 1-1.2 cm, apex rounded. Stamens ca. 8 mm; filaments flat, shorter than anthers; apex of anther connective not prolonged. Pistil ca. 8 mm; ovary subglobose; style ca. 1 mm; stigma disciform, margin rugosely undulate. Berry pale green (immature), subglobose, ca. 8 mm in diam. Seeds numerous. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Jun-Aug.

● Deciduous broad-leaved forests; 2800-3000 m. Yunnan [?Myanmar].

Shaw (in Stearn, Gen. Epimedium, 299-306. 2002) recognized two subspecies of Podophyllum aurantiocaule, which he separated into subsp. aurantiocaule ("Leaf lobes long, obovate to lanceolate; sinuses deep, penetrating 1/2-2/3 of radius; flowers usually in petiole fork; anthers 5-7.5(-9) mm long") and subsp. furfuraceum ("Leaf lobes short, triangular, sinuses shallow penetrating 1/4-1/3 of radius; flowers borne on petiole; anthers 3.5-4.5 mm").

[johnw]

Thanks Maggi - Corrected now.

I see the reference to purple flowers now but I have never seen any colour other than white in pictures.  

As for the names I go by what Robin uses: Stearn's spellings:

Podophyllum pleianthum    
Podophyllum versipelle
Podophyllum mairei
Podophyllum difforme    
Podophyllum delavayi
Podophyllum aurantiocaule subsp furfuraceum

Why Kew and the Flora use different endings for the species would mean hauling down the Latin dictionary and digging out Stearn tonight.  PMcD says versipellis, aurantiocaulis and difformis. See above note underlined.

BTW Philip had mentioned awhile back that there was a fellow in Vancouver who appeared at sales with pots and pots of P. difforme.  He quizzed him on how he cultivates it and he replied that difforme was growing like mad in his garden and did nothing special, he had plenty of spares.  Unfortunately they mysteriously collapsed (as they do for the rest of us here) last year and he lost the lot.  

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

Great to go back and have another look at the 2009 thread, so many super plants there. And I always enjoy seeing again, Susan's avatar picture. That is one happy dog!

[johnw]

This Podophyllum versipelle is a bit of a mysterious thing.  For awhile it bore flowers in the fork but as it matured they appeared at the base of the leaf as they should.  Today I noticed a two year old pleianthum x versipelle seedling with a small cluster of flowers up at the base of the leaf. 

johnw