I am not a botanist, very simply - an enthusiastic photographer. I want to know the species this Mussaenda plant belongs to. Many thanks in advance.
Thank you very much, Tony. I wonder if it is known as some variety; I see on the net that there are many colours of the bloom, all specified as Mussaenda erythrophylla. There are not much pictures of this species on the internet. I did come across one http://wokkil.pair.com/~pce/db/detail.pl?lang=NL&artikelenID=1189 which describes it as Mussaenda Red Lobster. I wonder whether 'Red Lobster' is only a name for trade sake, or does it imply as a cultivar. Thank you once again, Tony.
It is the same old M. erythrophylla I have known for over 40 years, without any cultivar designation. If it has been sold as 'Red Lobster' then I think you are right in suspecting that is only a trade name, used purely to promote sales. Alternatively, 'Red Lobster' may show some slightly different characteristics. I have not come across this name before. There seems to have been a tendency in recent years to place the "double" Asian cultivars such as 'Queen Sirikit', 'Aurore' etc under M. erythrophylla. I have doubts about this.
Dear Tony, Your confidence has eased my "restlessness" about knowing what species the "red" Musseanda belongs to! However, now I have started getting anxious about the "white" ones. I have been surfing on the net, wanting to know the difference between M. frondosa and M. phillipica. Here is where you may visit to see, during your leisure, the "white" kind of Mussaenda sp. I am talking about: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinesh_valke/349231718/in/set-72157594413493166/ Thank you.
Dinesh, I doubt that I can easily clear up the great confusion that seems to around concerning the botanical names of the white-flowered Mussaenda spp. The classification of this genus is very obscure, with no modern treatment available at species level for the Asian ones, that I am aware of. The first difficulty is to determine what is meant by the name M. frondosa. In Australia plants known by this name have been in gardens for maybe 100 years and are marginally frost-tolerant, suggesting a Himalayan origin? My grandfather had one in his garden in a Sydney hill suburb in the 1940s, and he was just an ordinary gardener. There are pictures of this same plant in the toptropicals.com web pages (as M. frondosa, take no notice of 'Schizomussaenda' added, it's quite mistaken), and in davesgarden.com (top 3 pics only) When I was working on names of garden plants in the Sydney Botanic Gardens in the 1970s I became suspicious that this plant may not be the true M. frondosa, as named by Linnaeus in 1753. You can see the two specimens in Linnaeus's herbarium at http://linnaeus.nrm.se/botany/fbo/m/mussa/mussfro1.html.se and http://linnaeus.nrm.se/botany/fbo/m/mussa/mussfro2.html.se There was, I now recall, a partial revision of Asian Mussaenda published around that time by an Indian botanist, and maybe it was that that raised doubts in my mind about the name of our familiar plant. M. frondosa is still recognised as a wild species in India -- see Checklist of flowering plants of Nepal at http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=110&taxon_id=220008890 When you google on images of M. frondosa you get some of this same plant that I knew, with only one 'flag'-sepal of a very pure white, but you also get most of the 'double' cultivars with multiple flag-sepals. You get these same cultivars if you google on M. erythrophylla or M. philippica, this last name yielding by far the largest number of images. But that doesn't mean it's right! The species name M. philippicawas published by French botanist A. Richard in 1830, based on a specimen from Luzon that is still presumably in the Paris Museum. I suspect the attachment of the cultivars to this botanical name is sheer guesswork. I can find no evidence that anyone has made any serious attempt to sort out botanical names of these cultivated species. There are a couple of other white-bracted species in cultivation that are more easily pinned down, can't think of their names just now.
My salutes to you; and thank you very much, Tony - for the crisp yet detailed response. I do feel better now with the feeling of guessing correctly - that Mussaenda species are not elaborated on the internet. AND in some sites there are inadvertent instances of description and/or images. Thank you once again; my best wishes to you.
