Oregon? I should think that would put it not only in Hitchcock and Cronquist
(where I do not recall seeing it), but in popular guides to Pacific States
flowers. Perhaps your old source used mislabeled specimens; or perhaps it
once existed in Oregon, but has been extirpated there. I must look into
this....
It does grow on the unpopulated outer coast of Vancouver
Island, and is definitely not introduced there.
Interesting. The next question would be, do L. camschatcense and L.
americanus ever occur naturally together? I do not suppose L. americanus
overlaps into Asia. One wonders if americanus is derived from camschatcense;
although intuitively it would seem that a species with unpigmented spathes
would appear by mutation from one with yellow pigment, since losing a trait
is more likely than gaining one.
The March 1994 issue of The Garden has a cover picture of a hybrid of L.
camtschatcense and L. americanum, almost white, and a few words about it
growing in a Cornish garden.>>
One wonders, do such hybrids occur in nature as well?
I cannot answer these questions where I am currently located; we do not have
camschatcense here in Washington State (or if we do, it must be extremely
rare).
Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
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