Friday, May 11, 2012

fritillary ~ 05/11/12 ~ Fort Ord

possible new to science fritillary
Fritillaria sp.
Liliaceae

Master's Student Sean Ryan from California State University, San Diego (aka San Diego State University) believes this may be an undescribed species of Fritillaria. Checker lily (Fritillaria affinis), which I've only seen once at Garland Ranch, tends to have wider leaves and is the only Fritillaria currently recorded from Fort Ord. I received Sean's permission to post these pictures online just in case it does end up being a new species. He said something about this fritillary being dispersed through bulblets, but then my notes got iffy as I was focusing more on taking pictures. Sean took the seed pod back to SDSU for study. I believe he attended this field trip since he did his undergraduate work at Cal Poly SLO and is still in contact with his former professors. I'll be curious to hear back from him with his findings.

2 comments:

Imperfect and Tense said...

Cutting edge science!
No pun intended.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Hmmm... oh sure, Graeme, aka Mr. Punster. This is pretty cool, though, to get pictures of something newly discovered.