NOTES ON SOME SUFFOLK MOTHS
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Lycium - Duke of Argyll’s Tea Tree Due to the difficulty in separating them, past Floras have tended to lump the two Chinese Lycium species barbarum and chinense together and treat them as an aggregate. Now, thanks to a useful note by Arthur Chater in BSBI News (102: 50-51) we have a clear way to distinguish them, at least when they are in flower. The following couplet gives the most reliable distinctions: Larger leaves of main stems elliptic to narrowly so, widest at the middle; corolla usually less then 17 mm in diameter; dark veins of corolla-limb mostly unbranched; corolla-lobes shorter than the rest of the corolla L. barbarum Larger leaves of main stems ovate, widest below the middle; corolla usually more than 17 mm in diameter; dark veins of corolla-limb reticulately branched; corolla-lobes at least as long as the rest of the corolla L. chinense He has provided an illustration to show the dark veins in the throat of the flower. These are branched in a net pattern (like a Chinese character) in chinense and simple and straight (like a barbaric spear) in barbarum. It is likely that L. barbarum is the commoner species in Suffolk, but I would welcome records of both species to check if this is the case. Martin Sanford SBRC, Ipswich Museum, High Street, Ipswich, Suffolk IP1 3QH
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 42 (2006)