It seems to me that I read somewhere that they do hybridize readily, to the extent that it's regarded as a problem by those who plant more than one and want to keep the strains distinct. I'll look around and see if I can remember where (??if) I saw that.

Thanks for the info Pegasus. I have lychnis coronaria in my garden now but would need to get some lychnis chalcedonica and plant them next to each other to see if they would indeed intermingle. I am just trying to picture what color their hybrid offspring would be. Hot Magenta x Fiery Red = ?????? Sounds like another garden experiment I would like to try. :-)

I don't believe there are all that many interspecific hybrids recorded in Lychnis. Take a look, for example, at the numerous Lychnis entries in IPNI (International Plant Names Index) at http://limhal.huh.harvard.edu/ipni/query_ipni.html. Only 2 names are preceded by the multiplication sign indicating known or presumed hybrid origin.

The New RHS Dictionary has entries for only 2 Lychnis hybrids, the best known in my experience being L. x haageana, and there is recent evidence that that may not be an interspecific hybrid at all. The other is L. x walkeri = L. coronaria x L. flos-jovis.

I suspect that L. coronaria and L. chalcedonica are not compatible, otherwise hybrids would have arisen and been recognised long ago, both being common garden plants and with overlapping flowering times (not absolutely sure of that). But I guess it's still possible that with suitable manipulation a hybrid might be produced, though in some such cases the hybrid plants are infertile or lack vigour.

And by the way, current taxonomic opinion is that the distinction between Lychnis and Silene does not hold up, or in cladistic jargon, at least one of them is not a single clade which contains all members of that clade. If the logic of this is followed and taking into account the rules of nomenclatural priority, all Lychnis species are to be transferred to Silene.

Wow!!!

Thank you for that very authoritative information. I have learned something today.

Thom

The most recent work I've seen recognizes a narrowly defined (but including all the species mentioned so far in this thread) Lychnis in addition to Silene and several small genera

Here is a link that might be useful: abstract

Thanks for the reference. I was vaguely aware of this development but the mind gets too cluttered! It looks like one of those cases where the one cladogram can support two or more classifications.

When a traditionally defined taxon (e.g. Silene) is shown to be paraphyletic (i.e. does not include ALL the branches of its clade) you can either enlarge it by taking in the branch previously treated as a distinct taxon; or you can maintain that branch as distinct and split off as additional distinct taxa all other branches below the point where it branches off. This is easier to diagram than to put in words!

Both these approaches satisfy cladistic principles but the first appeals to those ('lumpers') who like broadly defined taxa, the second to those ('splitters') who like smaller, more homogeneous taxa. Personally I would just as soon see Lychnis maintained, and accept the smaller genera mentioned by Nonmember.

I can't claim to be an expert in cladistic theory, the above is only my understanding.