I recieved a request from a member of the Scottish Rock Garden Club from the Czech Republic interested in seeing an image of a plant we have growing in the Alpine department of the Botanics called Rosularia muratdaghensis.

This plant was collected in 1962 on the Murat mountain in Turkey by Peter Davis, a Professor of Taxonomy at University of Edinburgh, former Associate here in the garden and a prolific plant collector. The plant sat in the collection for 27 years as an unidentified Rosularia before being published as a new species in 1989.

During that 25 year period the the plant had not flowered once, here in Edinburgh or in Zurich, and was described as new based on rosette leaf differences and its geographic isolation in Turkey.

As far as I can tell it has never flowered here in Edinburgh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The preserved Type specimen was made from the living collection plant not one made in the field all those years earlier.

 

This plant along with Rhododendron horlickianum are examples of a living types. The preserved nomenclatural Type specimens, the specimen forever linked with the plant’s name, coming from these cultivated plants of known wild origin.