In article ,
says...
In message , Charlie
Pridham writes
In article ,
says...
This plant was labelled with what I assume was a cultivar name - 'Gill
Lewis' - but didn't have any indication of what genus or species it
belonged to.

http://www.stewart.hinsley.me.uk/Images/GillLewis.jpg

Does anyone recognise it?

I am in agreement with Bob and Sacha achemines or streptocarpus a picture
of the whole plant would clinch it although I would favour achemines as I
feel you would have recognised a streptocarpus from its leaves. There are
no plants called Gill Lewis in the current plant finder so that is
probably the name of the person who raised it to sell it!

The other possibility I had considered was Streptosolen.

It was the inflorescence structure that led to it being recorded as
'Gill Lewis', rather than Steptocarpus? 'Gill Lewis'. (Regrettably the
photo is fairly old so I don't remember details of the leaves.)

The details aren't unambiguously clear, but it appears to have a purely
tubular calyx (you can see one sheathing the floral tube of one flower)
and an involucre from which from the flowers spring - unless what I'm
interpreting as an involucre is a cluster of calyces. That doesn't seem
to match the common run of Streptocarpus, Achimenes or Streptosolen, but
you can get considerable variation in a genus. Googling for 'Gill Lewis'
for each of this genera gives no results - I had hoped that given a
genus name Google would confirm the existence of the plant. ("Gill
Lewis" alone gives 3000 hits - any needle would be well hidden in the
haystack.)

Because I submit entries to the plant finder I have software that allows
me to search for whole or part words of all uk available plants so while
it may pop up in the 2008 plant finder there is nothing in the 2007,
Just Gill gives me 11 but nothing remotely likely, likewise Lewis yields
21 plants but nothing likely. However Mike may have found a plausible
source for the plant, at least its plant related, a lot of people selling
plants have lables thermal transfere printed with thier name on one side
and write the plant name on the other, after a year or to the sellers
name is all that remains ( it may be worth following up). I once had a
pelargonium with Frank Headly on one side of the lable and Frank Delaney
on the other, one turned out to be my mothers neighbour so its easy to
see how plants can get rechristened!
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea