Sunday, March 4, 2012

pink flowering currant ~ 03/04/12 ~ SFB Morse Botanical Reserve

pink flowering currant
Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum
Grossulariaceae

I'm fairly sure of this ID, because the leaves were not very hairy compared to the other possibility of chaparral current (Ribes malvaceum), which is also on the CNPS plant list and reported on Calflora for this location. If anyone can provide helpful hints on how best to distinguish between these two species, I'd greatly appreciate it.

ps 03/14/12 - I have the feeling that other bloggers gain something from my ramblings... of course, it could simply be the matter of timing. For another pink flowering currant blog feature, check out Town Mouse and Country Mouse.

3 comments:

randomtruth said...

You have it right - ID and leaf differences - malvaceum leaves are densely hairy/glandular and sanguineum are sparsely hairy. But even then the two can be tough to tell apart. R. s. var. glutinosum makes it much easier though - because of those long pendent flower clusters.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Thanks, Ken. So do malcaceum flower clusters not hang? It was difficult to discern a difference from the CalPhotos (linked in the common names above). Oh, good news! After 6 months of e-mails, I finally got the photographer to remove his incorrectly ID'd Yadon's piperia photo from Wikipedia.

randomtruth said...

Yep - malvaceum and sanguineum var. sanguineum both tend to stay in tighter clusters and don't become so pendulous. Here's one of my malvaceum pics for you to compare against. The flowers of malvaceum are also a bit stubbier, a diff you'll be able to tell once you've seen both a few times.