Plant of the day is: Androcymbium gramineum

Plant of the day is: Androcymbium gramineum or turtle shell/onion of the crows

So I know its gonna be a rough research hunt when I have a hard time nailing down that it is not in fact another species and that the world agrees on what it is.  Seems to me it's still a little vague and could use a botanist to just put his/her foot down on the matter.

I can tell you that it is from Western Sahara and Mauritania.  Yeah you know, that one country just the the northwest of Senegal.  Yeah.  I had to check a map.

As far as I can tell it is a small slender plant with grass-like leaves.  It grows from a bulb and has white/mauve flowers.  It grows in sandy/rocky/dry places.

I've found sites that list this species as a synonym with Androcymbium europaeum BUT I actually ran across an obscure reference when looking for photos that says that gramineum has dehiscent capsules while europaeum has indehiscent capsules.  I'll let you look it up for you're curious.  But it's a useful and prominent distinction.  I find references of gramineum existing in southern Spain (Almeria to be exact) but I wonder if it's not in fact europaeum.  Tough stuff.

Dehiscence

Along the above lines of confusion, I did find that there is quite a bit of natural variation in populations depending on their locations, which is pretty cool.  If one were able to grow these in any number I should think some really fantastic hybrids could be produced (tissue culture would also be extremely fun to try on something like this).

It is a member of the Colchicaceae family, of which I only recognize Colchicum the type genus and Uvularia surprisingly (there is a native Uvularia grandiflora here in MO).

Anyways, it's nifty.  And fairly endemic to those regions.  A real interesting plant that has yet to be appreciated to its fullest I think.

Now the fun part.  Pictures.  Some of these may be europaeum or another species but you get the idea.

 Love this one in the pebbles