As National Plant Collections (NPC) are heavily relying on the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and their annually published plant finder, I looked up how many entries of Tricyrtis the RHS lists. 163 results for Tricyrtis, that includes species, hybrids, varieties or cultivars which have been grown for ornamental purposes and have been or still are commercially available.
163 sounds a lot to start with (although nothing in comparison to other genera, thinking of the endless Iris or Rose cultivars out there), but at a closer look it is actually much less. Many entries refer to a synonym which means in fact several entries are copies of each other.
I copied every single entry into my Excel file, where I will start collating all the information. Now I will compare those entries with a search on The Plant List, a collaboration of all major botanic gardens which lists every known latin plant name. For lazy reasons I will refer to that as the 'Kew list'.
So this is Kew's list for Tricyrtis. It basically includes every single species of Tricyrtis ever known, discovered or described and also includes all synonyms and name changes. That should enable me to cross out synonyms and filter relevant names and species. But the Kew list does not count garden varieties and cultivars. Therefore Kew 'only' provides a comprehensive list of Tricyrtis species ever known to us, whereas the RHS gives an indication of cultivars ever known to us.
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| Screenshot of Tricyrtis Search on the Plant List |
After that I will look back at the RHS search to determine which of those entries are still available on the market (supplied). In the end I should have quite a good idea of the current Tricyrtis situation. Which species and cultivars exist, which ones are readily available and which ones are rare or only growing in the wild and not in cultivation at all. Wish me luck.
I need 48hr days...
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