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Ephedra identification

Question

How are you all on your Ephedra ID? I've looked for a key but can only find regional ones. Can anyone ID this plant for me?

 

 

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hi hello, this seems awesome!  I have been reading all this last period about ephedra and last days about ephedra taxonomy.. there are plenty of data to fish around from.  Of course you should return to the spot and photograph the fruits too. 

 

What are your suspicions? Hopefully, this seems like an Ephedra that forms underground  rootings and expands like this.. Well I dont know all 44 species, but maybe check E.distachya and similar. If that is the case (plant explanding by underground roots/spouts), you can easily try to start your own plants from this mother plant, and experiment a bit, preferably when the plant is on the vegetetive mode.... 

 

Raetsch says a lot on the subject on his encyclopedia... Your pics are very good for ID purposes, but I am too drunk to get on with books links and specifics - will do it at a later time... 

 

"Gymnosperm database"  has descriptions for most ephedras, check out its E.distachya  description

 

but yeah.... cool... AWESOME MAN< bravo >> what a find, huh??  

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Thanks sagiXsagi. This ID request was lonely for a while.

I'll check out the Gymno database in more detail in the hope of ID-ing this thing. 

 

Only one around though, so I'm afraid there'll be no fruit. 

 

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thats a beast of a plant for sure, tis a male (excellent cone photos)  and worth propagating:wink:

Not a gera, maybe fragilis looking at form? guess but not keyed.

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^^^ 

why do you say fragilis?  Doesn't this form look like its a species propagating vegetatively by suckers? As far as my little readings are concerned, fragilis grow long stems, while this seems like a short plant. Why do you think fragilis and not something like distachya? 

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looks like it has "woody: stems coming out of the core structure, with the branches coming straight off it to me.

Quite similar to what I may have seen before :wink: and distachya  is as rare as rocking horse shit in a place with no native phedras.

 

Not a solid ID I'll reiterate, happily be disproven.

 

my understanding of fragilis is its a "group", 2 subspecies and and has a variety of forms......and active properties

no expert but.

 

 

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to me it seems like the branches come from all over tha place, there's only one woody stem, not sure its from the same plant... Maybe some more pics would help... 

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Scratched me head for a minute, then saw the woody one jump out in the preview photo....lol

View the image in full, its a pretty big good image. Can see the wood in it then, its got a fair bit of bark going on:wink:

I cant make out any green suckers from the ground in high-res, frag will sucker slowly out from the core but its poor at it, and they are tight as to the central.

 

I woulda expected some suckers at the path edges with some other species.

 

LOL...could be something else altogether sagi, just where I lean too:), could also be one of the US innactive.

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I am not insisting, just talking about these ancient plants and wherabouts and what not from a quite newbie and neopyte point of view... excuse me , anyone reading and already growing the plant... anyways -  you might be right (edit - you are in many ways for the fragilis) , I didn't think that  this plant might be regularly pruned back as it seems to have been (?) and that its sprouting over a pile of dead old stems of it (?) so it could could be quite old, but NO significant stem exists....  or maybe we dont always see it, and ephedra is good in that    (edit2, you must be right.. this has to be the easiest-to-grow ephedra to be there..... there's a single woody trunk to the left as remains of growth with went higher even.... foemineas seem to have such a behaviour if this is a repreately cut down specimen... 

 

The length of the growth (seems to ) exceeds max length of distachya growth...  Maybe OP should measure and post back, and maybe comment on the whole thing... is this a single plant ? doesnt look so... but I am an ephedra illiterate, excl. recently seeing many specimens of foeminea, recently...  Maybe the species E.major could also be considered.... but like other species, it forms a trunk....  Perhaps in favourable conditions and in older plants, even sinica and similar slow growers could form suckers to form a bush... or there are multiple plants here.....  multiple pics would help and, sincerely it would awesome to see an ephedra in a domesticated place... I have undertood how foeminea goes in a degree.... want to plant it in a place of mine, to become old, like a terscheckii or pasacana or what you place in the ground to be there when you are not... 

 

Well they are beautiful plants, and seem to be easier to grow, (careful) transplant  even ... than what you regularly read about ephedra growing... and with my drunk ramblings I would like to offer fresh Ephedra foeminea seed to people, havent been to the seaside bushes for some time ...

 

Man if this is reall fragilis, I would love to compare this material to local E. foeminea material...  Letting aside how I am planning a comparison of mountainous and seaside foeminea ... This seems like an interesting subject, the fragilis family and if there is indeed a shorter and more erect fraglis , which there must be according what I read,  it might be 2+1 things : 1)  fragilis and foeminea are different species  (content would play a role ultimately to differentaite) , especially if the "real" fragilis can be also a climber  2) fragilis and foeminea = fragilis ssp. campylopoda are the extremes of a largely varying (in what?) mediteratean Ephedra species  such is the climbing foeminea, climbing lengths longer than what are on the record. 5 meters is an understatement for many of the specimens I found locally. 

 

it might be a huge old plant of anything ephedra. I was wrong, of course  to assume only distachya could be having this sprawling habit and regrowth from multiple underground positions... E.fragilis  and E.fragilis campylopoda are described as especially climping,,, but I have found plenty of resprouting capability in the habitat . That is the experience with foemineas I found and I  sense even species like sinica can propagate to conquer a patch in favourable conditions... or I already said that? 

 

In an case this seem like many plants, or a single plant that seem like they are regularly pruned... 

 

Sorry to bring more chaos than order. peace. 

 

 

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