563 Evaluation of Spontaneous Species for the Innovation in Floriculture: Pancratium maritimum L. as Ornamental Plant R. Paradiso, R. Buonomo and S. De Pascale Dep. of Agricultural Engineering and Agronomy University Federico II Portici, Naples Italy M. Cardarelli Dep. of Geology and Mechanical Engineering Bioengineering and Hydraulics for the Territory University of Tuscia Viterbo Italy Keywords: sea daffodil, cut stem, garden plant, landscape, bulbs Abstract Pancratium maritimum is a perennial geophyte which grows spontaneously on sandy dunes and beaches of Mediterranean coasts, where it plays an important role in preventing the dune erosion. However, in many coastal areas natural plant population are being drastically reduced, because of sea erosion and human activities. In order to evaluate the possibility of cultivation of Pancratium as ornamental plant, the aims of this study were: to investigate its behaviour in natural environment; to set up a protocol for bulb micropropagation; to evaluate the performances of potted plants in cold glasshouse. INTRODUCTION P. maritimum L. (Fam. Amaryllidaceae) is an herbaceous perennial geophyte, also known as sea daffodil or sea lily. It grows on sandy dunes and beaches of Mediterranean coasts, where it plays an important role in the preservation of coastal landscape keeping back the sand through the roots and preventing the dune erosion (Polunin and Huxley, 1987). However, diffusion of natural populations has been drastically reduced in the last few years by sea erosion and human activities (Grassi et al., 2005), so that it has been characterized recently as an endangered species (Nikopoulos et al., 2008). Plants have a big bulb, linear green-glaucous leaves, twisted as a spiral, and scented white flowers, borne in umbels, pollinated by insects. Fruits are capsules containing seeds, mainly spread by wind, that also have a black spongy coating which allows their diffusion by sea (Medrano et al., 2000). Plant propagation can be by seed, however, five or more years are needed to develop plants capable of flowering. The propagation ratio of bulbs is also low, since each bulb produces only 1-3 bulblets in a 2-year period. Conversely, tissue culture may be an alternative propagation method to produce a great number of high quality plantlets. Seeds can be profitably used to establish in vitro cultures, reducing the manual labor and the number of infected explants (Nikopoulos and Alexopoulos, 2008). The aims of this study were: to investigate the behaviour of spontaneous plants of Pancratium maritimum in their natural habitat for a better understanding of their biological cycle; to set up a reliable procedures of micropropagation by using seeds; to evaluate the performances of plants grown in cold greenhouse as ornamental plant. MATERIALS AND METHODS Propagation Seeds were collected in September 2007, in Grosseto coastal area (Tuscany, Italy). After the removal of the external parenchyma, seeds were surface-sterilized by immer- sions in ethanol 70% (v/v, 1 minute) and sodium hypochlorite 0.5% (v/v, 15 minutes), then rinsed with sterile distilled water and placed on solidified basal media (0.7% agar), containing Murashige & Skoog mix (MS) at 3 concentrations, 0, 2.2 or 4.4 g l -1 , at 25°C ± Proc. II nd Int’l Conf. on Landscape and Urban Hort. Eds.: G. Prosdocimi Gianquinto and F. Orsini Acta Hort. 881, ISHS 2010