Although there are a number of spring bulbs in bloom at the moment locally, today’s photograph features a summer-blooming geophyte. Leichtlin’s mariposa is native to California, Nevada, and Oregon, though it is by far more common in California than elsewhere.
The epithet honours Max Leichtlin, a German horticulturist who specialized in growing bulbous plants. It doesn’t seem Leichtlin ever traveled to California, so perhaps he was the first in Europe to grow this species to a flowering stage (or, maybe, botanical favoritism?). Comments would be welcome specifically about whether there has been a long-term trend in moving away from naming species after people in favour of geographical or descriptive terms (with the notable exception of celebrity-naming).
Additional photographs of this species are available via CalPhotos: Calochortus leichtlinii; it is always intriguing to see with species of Calochortus the range of morphology in the flower (petal size, petal shape, petal colour, petal patterning, and so on).
Biology resource link: Since some of you were quite interested in the lichen voting from the previous entry, here’s a lichen-centred article submitted to BPotD by UBC Botanical Garden’s director, Patrick Lewis. How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology, published in The Atlantic in 2016, features work done by University of Alberta lichenologist Dr. Toby Spribille.
It is quite clear from the first description of the plant in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine that the plant or seed was collected from the Sierra Nevada by Benedikt Roezl who supplied Max Leichtlin in Karlsruhe. Leichtlin then sent bulbs to Kew Gardens where they flowered the following summer.
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/439645#page/151/mode/1up
Roezl already had a genus and many species named after him.
Fascinating link to Spribille. Thanks Daniel!
Always a joy to be educated in the unusual. I too enjoyed reading about Dr Toby Spribille. Interesting that the complexity lichens remained undiscovered for so long. Now I will have more respect for their existance when I clean my driveway. Thanks Daniel
If this topic interests you, please don’t stop with the 2016 article. Toby Spribille’s study generated a lot of follow-up research, but much of that new research has suggested that the original findings may not be broadly applicable. See for example James Lendemer’s recent paper in the American Journal of Botany (https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajb2.1339) or Kristiina Mark’s paper in New Phytologist (https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nph.16475).
Same question about Camassia leichtlinii.
Much the same answer: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/84203#page/701/mode/1up