#asparagaceae

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Lachenalia splendida

Western South Africa has many bulbs in the genus Lachenalia, and these are generally small plants that grow in the winter and go dormant in the summer. Although the individual flowers may be small, they come in showy spires and often have exquisite colors, like the purple-to-white gradation seen here. This one is still in a pot, but most of the species do very well in the ground in a winter-rainfall climate like ours. L. splendida comes from northwest of Clanwilliam, to the north of Cape Town. Lachenalia was formerly included in the family Hyacinthaceae, but a new classification system puts in the the subfamily Scilloideae within the Asparagus Family.

-Brian

[faguscarolinensis]

Agave x 'Kissho Kan' / 'Kissho Kan' Agave at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[francescointoppa]

Scilla autunnale (Prospero autumnale (L.) Speta, Asparagaceae)

[snototter]

A mat-rush flower (Lomandra sp.) in Lane Cove River Park, Australia

by John Turnbull

[syngoniums]

Yucca treculeana in Uvalde County.

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

False Solomon's Seal Maianthemum racemosum Asparagaceae

Photograph taken on August 13, 2023, at Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.

[wenbochenphoto]

Stilted Paper-lily （Laxmannia brachyphylla）. A small tufted, stilt-rooted perennial herb from the south coast of SW Western Australia.

[kararadaygum]

..

[drhoz]

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 - Greymouth

The next stop was an overnight at the largest town in the West Coast region - Greymouth, with a population of 8,400 at last count. The area was first settled in the 1300s, but in the early nineteenth century iwi from the East Coast of the island had conquered the area to control the supply of pounamu (New Zealand Greenstone).

The Grey River is one of the short steep rivers that originate in the Southern Alps, and has managed to break through the coastal range. The area is also somewhat notorious for the katabatic wind known The Barber that flows down the gorge and through town, frequent flooding thanks to all the storms that blow in off the Tasman and get stopped dead by the Alps, and the number of shipwrecks on the sandbar at the rivermouth.

We had a short stroll around the estuary at sunset, but I didn't get many usable photos. The arse of the Weka that disappeared into the undergrowth wasn't particularly photogenic either.

Some of the species covered earlier, or from @purrdence's previous trip.

Greymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand

[witchstone]

Sand Lily  Schizocarphus nervosus Highmoor, 3300, South Africa -29.317155, 29.616932 by alison_young

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Agave ghiesbreghtii

At the Ruth Bancroft Garden, we have many species of Agave, often called century plants. Most of these come into flower in the summer, but some of the more southerly-occurring ones bloom in the winter, as is the case here. Agave ghiesbreghtii is not uncommon in southern Mexico, especially in southern Puebla and in Oaxaca, and it is variable. The form pictured comes from near Tehuacan, Puebla, and it was named as Agave purpusorum before being sunk into A. ghiesbreghtii. The second photo shows the flowering rosette, and the third photo shows a younger plant with its prominent pale-green mid-stripes running down the leaves (this is not variegation, but a normal part of the plant's appearance). The lowest photo shows the chalice-like flowers, green on the outside and white on the inside, borne singly or in pairs on the stout stalk. While formerly put in the family Agavaceae, the genus Agave is now included in the subfamily Agavoideae within the Asparagus Family.

-Brian

[faguscarolinensis]

Agave lophantha / Thorn-Crested Agave at the JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC

[francescointoppa]

Scilla silvestre (Scilla bifolia L., Asparagaceae)

[deathtek]

5/5/24

[syngoniums]

Blue funnel-lily (Androstephium coeruleum) is one of the earliest blooming wildflowers in this region. This cemetery population is just kicking off. This is in fact a fairly uncommon plant to run across in my experience, though that may simply be a factor of not looking early enough. The corms are apparently edible, but it would be a shame to dig them up. They appear to be nearly nonexistent in cultivation, outside the collections of the most obsessive bulbaholics.