@Chris_Valentine @miked
There mist be many of these that don’t come up in the browser- would be sad if good observations are lost - cam’t remember how I found this but now links by a tag
name change - but needs to be linked -previously agreed by expert
OK, I see that Prix of the botanical garden agreed.
So are you asking for agreements to the 2022 id to get it linked to others? Because I think the weight of Prix’ expertise on this website would be difficult to overcome.
So why not repost it, explaining the situation with a link to the original? Then your ispot expertise will be enough.
Thanks for your input Jo, and was thinking of reposting. but this is more about how many other observations have been lost because of dictionary changes over the years, I only found this one by searching for the date OBSERVED, thinking that it may have been duplicated - I had it marked as posted on iSpot.
Meanwhile I wish you’d take a look at my Spergularia just posted
EOL doesn’t match saying They have simple, broad leaves - see Fermkloof where the text has Leaves opposite and in axillary tufts, linear.but some images have broad leaves!!
Most southern African ones are documented as having leaves as recorded by CASABIO
Could you agree?
Spergularia:
Strelizia v.30 gives these three species and their differences:
SPERGULARIA ± 40 spp., cosmopolitan
*bocconii (Scheele) Asch. & Graebn. Annual or biennial, with slender stems, 50–250 mm tall,
from a slender taproot. Leaves opposite, without axillary tufts, linear. Flowers in open, glandular-
hairy cymes, entirely white, or pink with white bases, sepals 2–3.5 mm long. Seeds not winged,
pale greyish brown. Sept.–Oct. Mainly near coast in disturbed places, NS, CCR (Namaqualand
to E Cape, Europe and Mediterranean region).
*media (L.) C.Presl ex Griseb. perennial sea spurry Glabrescent, ± sticky, sprawling peren-
nial, up to 0.5 m tall, with a thick, woody rootstock. Leaves opposite and in axillary tufts, linear,
± succulent. Flowers in open, glandular-hairy cymes, white or pink, sepals usually longer than 4
mm. Seeds winged. Oct.–Jan. Weed of coastal or inland marshes, SN, G, NS, NH, KB, KV, WM,
CCR (cosmopolitan weed).
*rubra (L.) J. & C.Presl sand spurry Sprawling annual or perennial from slender taproot, up to
200 mm tall. Leaves opposite and in axillary tufts, linear. Flowers in open cymes, uniformly pink
or lilac, sepals 3–4 mm long. Seeds not winged, dark brown. Sept.–Dec. Weed of sandy places,
NH, CCR (cosmopolitan weed).
If .Mary Kidd says “the fruits are necessary for determination” then that is not a feature mentioned in this Strelitzia volume. Seeds maybe? The seeds, winged or unwinged is given as a distinguishing feature.
I agree, the EOL description of the leaves (and perhaps other info given) is at variance with all other descriptions; I suspect it is an error of transcription.
S. media is given as introduced in SA. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:1019502-1
.
Miked mentions Spergula arvensis in UK - Flora Europeae says of that species (which is a different genus) " Very variable in habit, pubescence,size of seed and presence of seed-papillae.
Of Spergularia media, FE says “populations with unwinged seeds occur in W. Europe & the Baltic region.” Given all the SA Spergularia media plants have an introduced origin, who knows? Kew also shows accepted subspecies, two of which are recorded from SA.
So I cannot agree - or disagree - with your ID on the evidence of three photos. Measurement of sepals, petals, stipules and seed structure of several plants of a populations could indicate an ID, but I cannot be more helpful than that.
…
Later… I looked on google scholar for published, peer reviewedarticles. There are quite a few…. Here’s one
…more hours of fun on the horizon.
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Yes that paper is very interesting. One slight note of caution might be that they don’t have a lot of plants in the sampling and say that some of the species in the group are very variable.
The ones that I have observed (Cape Point and West Coast) all have the linear leaves and the calyx lobes
Flowers seem identical too.