Description
A rare and little seen endemic of Texas, USA limited to a small area spanning Refugio, Goliad and San Patricio counties, the species name stems from the type locality, which was near city of Refugio.
This species, with narrow, channeled foliage, opens in the mid-morning and has medium-sized, mid-yellow, pleasantly fragrant flowers. This is remarkable as only 25% of its original genetic makeup is from the fragrant Z. chlorosolen. (its other ancestor, Z. pulchella, is scentless). The flowers are 20-25mm long and are borne from July to October/November depending on season and temperatures. Culture is as for the other species and this has no foibles.
This plant has an evolutionary history that can be traced but it is a perfectly valid and stable species in its own right (this is the way that the European Bison came into being)! Detailed studies by Flagg and Flory (in the 1976 Amaryllis year book), demonstrate that it is a stabilised species resulting from an ancestral backcross between two other plants which still exist and which overlap slightly in their distribution. One of these is the yellow, day-blooming Z. pulchella, the other is a scarce and little seen Texan endemic, Z. jonesii which is itself an ancient cross between Z. pulchella (again) and the white, evening- and night-blooming Z. chlorosolen (seen as herbertiana in older literature) . Both Z.pulchella and Z. jonesii are diploids, each having 2n=48 and Z. refugiensis also has this same level of 2n=48 (though a few, odd plants have been found where 2n=46).
