Since the beginning of May I've been watching this Holboellia angustifolia at the entrance to the tunnel, and it still looks pretty much the same. I found an article about these in a gardening magazine which you can read here (in French) on pages 26-34: Bulletin la N'avette n°3 - click the full screen at the bottom right and it's a readable size. At the start of the article are diagrams of the male and female flowers (of H. latifolia), below which is says that the male and female flowers are a different colour. Page 28 shows male and female flowers without saying which is which. In the BPotD for this plant, Holboellia angustifolia subsp. angustifolia, @Daniel Mosquin notes that the photo is of female flowers. So I'm confused by the one flower in my second photo that I thought showed stamens. And on this page for H. angustifolia ssp. linearifolia, Holboellia angustifolia ssp. linearifolia T. Chen & H. N. Qin 1997 (LARDIZABALACEAE), with a very detailed description, it says (English paragraph at the bottom) the male flowers have the shorter pedicels, yet it shows the white flowers with longer pedicels. In the magazine, though, for H. latifolia, it says the white flowers are male and the female are purple. I wish I'd realized that I wanted to pull open a flower. I'll do that next week.
Here is what led me to think I was looking at stamens. I still don't understand what I'm looking at here.
Holy Holboellia! I found female flowers today. I posted flowers from this vine, now labelled Stauntonia angustifolia from my visit two days ago at Late May 2019 - different great stuff, yellow, purple and more. When I got home and reviewed this thread, I saw that I had totally forgotten about figuring out female/male flowers. So I went back today, and for a while pulled apart some male flowers, wondered how many I'd have to pull apart before finding a female. After about 15 minutes, I finally saw a white flower. After five more minutes, partially spent convincing myself that they came from the same plant, I saw five more. It's not even a subtle difference - the female flowers are a totally different colour, and the pedicels are twice the length of the flower, whereas the pedicals on the male flowers are the same length as the flower. I didn't pull these apart, since I only found six of them. If I have this backwards, I would like to be told about it please.
Thank you, Ron. I find drawings very difficult to understand. What I think I have learned from that: the purple or white "petals" are really sepals; I did not notice the petals, which are very tiny 5 and 6, which include stamens, look like what I called a male flower above, so that should be right 7, staminodes and carpels, look like what I called the female flower, so that should be right 1, flowering branch, shows two drawings, one male and one female, without saying which is which; that was my problem with one of the sources I mentioned originally; but it's clear that one has much longer pedicels. drawing 9 for the linearifolia subspecies, shows fruit and flowering branches on what look like short pedicels. I am exactly as confused as before. Well, more-so, because I thought I had it figured out.
OK, Douglas Justice just emailed me with a quote from what will eventually be Vancouver Shrubs, which says in part: Contrary to what appears in the literature, female flowers are creamy white and the narrower, more numerous 1- to 1.5-cm male flowers are dusty purple (the flowers are usually described the other way around).He said I have it right - the purple flowers are male; the white ones female.
