Flora-Fauna

Fritillaria acmopetala Boiss.

(First published in Diagn. Pl. Orient. 7: 104 (1846); Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 1, Pl. LXXII nº 2; 1966) (powo.science.kew.org)

• Life-form & habit : Perennial bulbous geophyte; bulb globose-ovoid, 1–2 cm; stem slender, 30–70 cm tall, leafy from about the middle upward.

• Leaves : Basal leaves oblong, long-petiolate and caducous; cauline leaves all alternate, linear to linear-lanceolate, plane.

• Inflorescence & flowers : Flowers solitary or few, large, nodding, long cylindric-campanulate; tepals about 3 cm long, oblanceolate-oblong, contracted at the apex into a broad mucro, more or less recurved outward, yellowish flushed reddish inside, brown-red outside, sometimes also mixed with yellow, tessellated; filaments papillose, about 1.5 times as long as the anthers; style trifid above the middle.

• Fruit : Capsule oblong-claviform, not winged.

• Phenology : Flowers from March to May.

• Habitat & elevation : Stony places, from the lower mountain belt to the middle mountain belt.

• Lebanese distribution : Recorded by Mouterde from above ‘Aramoun in Kesrouan, ‘Achkout, Rayfoun, Ra‘chine, Hadtoun toward Mayfouk, Nahr-ed-Deheb toward Machta, Moghairé-Afqa, the forest of Ehden, above Ehden, Hasroun and Sannine.

• Native range : Cyprus, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye.

• Diagnostic remarks : Distinguished in Mouterde’s key from Fritillaria elwesii by its broader tepals prolonged at the apex into a triangular, more or less reflexed appendage, and by its plane leaves; F. elwesii has oblong-linear to obovate tepals without such an appendage and narrowly linear, folded-channelled leaves. It differs from F. alfredae by its brown-red flowers, style divided above the middle and non-winged capsule; F. alfredae has greenish or whitish-green flowers, a style shortly divided near the apex and a capsule with winged angles.