Sinningia leucotricha

1. Propagation
2. Variation
3. Hybridization
4. Feature table
5. Publication and etymology
6. External link

Sinningia leucotricha has the most beautiful foliage of any sinningia.  The white hairs that cover the leaves are thickest on young leaves, since the number of hairs is fixed, and they get further apart as the leaf expands.  The flowers are relatively small, tubular, and orange-red.

Sinningia leucotricha, or "Brazilian Edelweiss" (under which name I saw it displayed in Frankfurt's Palmengarten), has been a popular plant ever since its discovery.  The foliage is particularly attractive when it is young, since the hairs are more tightly bunched when the leaves are smaller.  As the leaves expand to their full extent, the spacing between the hairs also expands, so that the hair density drops.

Sinningia leucotricha is one of those seasonal species (like, for instance, S. lineata but not S. piresiana or S. hatschbachii) which can sometimes be induced to bloom a second time by cutting off the stems after they have finished blooming.&nbps; This does not always work, but if there are dormant stem buds on the tuber, they may be stimulated into growth by the removal of the stems.

Propagation

Propagation of S. leucotricha is usually by seed, since flowering stems of a mature plant seem to be reluctant to produce new plants.  They may root and produce a small tuber, but the tuber normally does not sprout after it goes dormant.

Fortunately, S. leucotricha is very easy to grow from seed.

This picture shows a group of year-old S. leucotricha seedlings, already exhibiting the hairy foliage.  The first year, the foliage is very ordinary, and similar to those of (e.g.) S. cardinalis seedlings.

Variation

There are a number of varieties of S. leucotricha in cultivation.  The standard plant has one tier of four leaves, but there are plants with two tiers.  Jon Dixon has a number of plants of this species, and when they flourish, they sometimes get that second tier.

There is also some variation in the flowers; the standard plant has a ring of small dark spots at the boundary between the tube and the slightly flaring lobes.  Perhaps some of this variation is due to long-ago hybridization.

Jon Dixon grows a number of variations on S. leucotricha, so I have devoted a page to his plants.

Hybridization

I believe that S. leucotricha has been crossed with many of the other members of the Dircaea clade.  Given the results of other intra-Dircaea hybrids, all such crosses are likely to be fertile.

S. leucotricha x reitzii

I have crossed S. leucotricha with S. reitzii, obtaining a good plant.

S. leucotricha x douglasii

I have also crossed S. leucotricha with S. douglasii.  The resulting seedlings have foliage intermediate between the two parents.  One bloomed in May 2007.

S. leucotricha x cardinalis

I raised seed of this cross from the GHA seed fund.  Most of the plants actually turned out to be S. leucotricha, but one was clearly a hybrid: see its page.

S. macrostachya x leucotricha

Jon Dixon got this plant from seed on his S. macrostachya.

Feature table for Sinningia leucotricha

Publication

The 1988 AGGS Sinningia Register says that S. leucotricha is a synonym for S. canescens, but it is now known that they are two different species.

The following information is from the Smithsonian Gesneriad Checklist.

• Publication (as Rechsteineria leucotricha): Hoehne, 1956 (in the Gloxinian).
• In 1973, H.E. Moore published this species as Sinningia leucotricha.
• In 1975, Hans Wiehler decided it was the same as S. canescens.
• It was later acknowledged to be a distinct species (Boggan & Chautems 1991).

Etymology: leuco- ("white") + -trich ("hair").

External Link

Ron Myhr's Gesneriad Reference Web has a picture showing S. leucotricha and S. canescens side by side.  The picture was taken in Geneva, at the growing facility of Alain Chautems.