Best wishes to all visiting members. These few photographs were taken yesterday 5th March. I thought this plant would be easy to identify due to it's white mottled leaves, but I was wrong, I havn't been able to find any photographs, illustrations or descriptions to help identify this plant. Your help will be greatly appreciated.
I'd say Crepis, but which species I couldn't help you with. The mottling you're seeing on the leaves isn't something natural to the plant - it's leaf-miner damage, so I'm not surprised you didn't find any specific data on it. Just for future reference, Picris tends to have leaflets on the rachis, where Crepis doesn't, and also the sepals on Picris tend to be much more pronounced rather than hidden beneath the petals.
Thank you Iorax. This is the 2nd specimen that I have come across with the mottled leaves. Without the mottled leaves it might be Crepis Sancta subsp. nemaunensis. or once again Crepis bursifolia? These plants are so fifficult to identify! Shortly, I will create a new thread showing what I think is an Anchusa or Alkanet. Would appreciate your opinion. Unfortunate this Boraginaceae was too far and difficult to reach to make additional photographs. If I can identify it then when another specimen becomes available I make additional photographs.
Good evening lorax, Today I have searched the area where I live for a Crepis with mottled leaves. I have found that this species is dispersed throughout area, all with mottled leaves. It seems that it must be a totally different species of the Crepis tribe. The only thing to do is send the photographs to Kew Gardens for identification. Uploaded is another photo of a plant growing at a quota of 400 metres, found two kilometres distant from the original photographs.
Most probably, this leaf discoloration has nothing to do with the species identity. On both photographs showing the entire plant with surrounding vegetation, you can find few unrelated species with similar spots on the leaves. There are various reasons of this discoloration: - viral or fungal disease (most studied is tobaco mosaic virus), - nutritional soil problems, - herbicide contamination (aminopyralid and related) which can also be carried over with the animal manure - big problem for vegetable growers. ...
Hi Andrej, Thank you for always coming to my rescue. If you do not mind me saying so, I think you are a veritable encyclopedia. Do you know of any publications that are dedicated to the identification of these many tribes similar to Dandelion, Hieracium, Crepis, Picris etc.? I remember seeing one entitled "The Dandelion Family" on Amazon some 2-3 years ago. I have searched high and low for it without success. Once again, many thanks.
Thank you Duffy, but I cannot boast to be an encyclopedia. My memory is very poor and it does not improve with years going. However, a decent visual memory saves me a lot. I do not remember a name but I remember where to find it. :) I am lucky enough to have an 8-volume book describing our local flora (Intermountain Flora) in which every species has a drawing. Not sure whether any other botanical issue has this nice feature. "The Dandelion Family" book either does not exists (except some romantic books) or went down the history. There are some books devoted to the European Flora: http://www.summerfieldbooks.com/search.asp?whichpage=1&types=yes&type=European+Flora among which the 5-volume Flora Europaea is probably the most useful: http://www.summerfieldbooks.com/showdetails.asp?id=2611 There are few free e-books: http://www.digitalbookindex.org/_search/search010biolfloraeuropeana.asp and nice compilation of botanical web sites: http://botanicaljourneys.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=2
Hello Andrey, Thank you for your links. I want to give you the following because I found it on Google and the leaves bare the same markings. http://www.google.it/imgres?imgurl=...efurl=http://www.empolimicologica.it/erbe.asp Thanks and best wishes, duffy
I don't know why duffy's link doesn't work (for me anyway), but I think this is it: http://www.empolimicologica.it/erbe.asp Click the crepis santa image.
