Description
(now correctly Oncostema sicula)
Oncostema is a new genus created by Professor F. Speta to accommodate a small group of plants, formerly lumped into Scilla but now considered so very distinct that they deserve a new genus.
Scilla sicula is geographically more widely spread than its endemic relatives, being found as relict populations in Calabria, S., Malta, Gozo, and neighbouring islands with rare occurrences in Sicily. It is probably no less rare, it simply has more widely scattered colonies.
It resembles a much larger form of S. peruviana but it has pale, almost blue-grey, flowers with just a hint of indigo, verging one way to dusky pink at times and in the other direction approaching white. The anthers are green, held on blue filaments. It also has leaves which are ciliate (with short white hairs) along a thin, transparent membrane on the leaf edges. The leaves are wider than those of peruviana and additionally, and unlike its close relatives, it is a tetraploid.
So far this has only been tried here under glass, where it is very easy and tolerant, in a well-drained loam soil in sun. It does seem to like shallow planting to ripen the bulbs. In time we will try it outside, where I suspect that it may be hardy offset against which is the fact that it is very early flowering, sometimes beginning in February.
