#asparagaceae

[kararadaygum]

..

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Agave victoriae-reginae

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

False Solomon's Seal Maianthemum racemosum Asparagaceae

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

[francescointoppa]

M – Muscari comosum (L.) Mill. – Giacinto dal pennacchio (Asparagaceae)

[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.

[witchstone]

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

[wenbochenphoto]

Among all the Maianthemum species I have seen, this is the rarest one, saw it once only, in NW Yunnan's Shangri-La County, about 3000m.

[drhoz]

#1931 - Cordyline australis - Cabbage Tree

AKA tī kōuka or cabbage-palm. Originally Dracaena australis, when it was described by Georg Forster in 1786, after Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected some in 1769.

Another of Aotearoa’s most iconic plants. The binomial refers to the shape of the rhizomes - club-like - and the southern distribution. The common name name is likely down to Georg Forster again, writing in his Voyage round the World (1777) who discusses the edibility of the central shoot in comparison to the ‘true cabbage palm’ - probably the cabbage palmetto (Sabal palmetto) of Florida.

It’s certainly edible - not only do a wide variety of New Zealand native fauna love the stuff, the Māori cultivated it for the rhizomes and growing shoots. The meter-long leaves were also collected for the very strong fibres they contained, which were used as rope and as protective capes and legwear when travelling anywhere Matagouri and Spaniard Grass grows. You’ll recall those from earlier posts - protective legwear is strongly recommended.

The Cordylines of NZ were probably derived from an influx of tropical plants some 15 million years ago, and promptly diversified. They certainly thrive in cool climates much better than similar-looking plants - they’re now grown as far north as Scotland, and one common name in use in the UK is Torquay Palm. 

A healthy Cabbage Tree can be as tall as 20m, but there’s not many of those left. That’s partly down to land clearance, Rural Decline where a lone Cabbage Palm that was lucky enough to be left behind by land clearance is slowly killed by livestock and rabbits, and Sudden Decline caused by the bacterium Phytoplasma australiense, which may be spread from tree to tree by the introduced passionvine hopper from Australia.

[reddirttown]

Language of Flowers: Dragon Plant

There is a flower for every day of the year, in the language of flowers. The flower for today, December 6, is Dragon Plant, which signifies snare. Image above from Wikipedia. Dracaena marginata, commonly known as Dragon Plant or Spanish dagger, is an attractive, stiff-leaved plant with green sword-like leaves edged with red. The genus name comes from the Greek word drakaina, meaning a female…

[faguscarolinensis]

Anthericum liliago / St. Bernard's Lily at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[chlorophyll-and-chitin]

Muscari neglectum

04-SEP-2022

Melbourne, Vic

[kararadaygum]

..

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Agave ovatifolia

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

Star-flowered Lily-of-the-Valley Maianthemum stellatum Asparagaceae

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

[francescointoppa]

P – Polygonatum multiflorum (L.) All. – Sigillo di Salomone (Asparagaceae)

[syngoniums]

Here's a great example of a seller that is setting off red flags for poached plants. Here's why:

1. Species is uncommon in cultivation, and highly desirable for collectors. Cultivation is tricky due to its slow growth and absolute intolerance for excess water, and it is not appealing to large scale commercial growing for that reason. It's also a North American native that grows in California and adjacent states, where this seller is based.

2. Seller has multiple mature or near mature size plants, but does not have any seedlings or intermediate size juveniles.

3. Plants lack the uniformity of appearance that you see when a group of seedlings is grown under the same conditions. Cultivated agaves often have a more open rosette, rather than the tight habit we see here.

4. While cultivated plants certainly lose leaves, most growers will trim them off before posting them for sale. Additionally, the bottommost leaves are the first to go when an agave is stressed, and they all show dry bottom leaves.

5. They are bare root and have small, dry root balls. Growers that ship bareroot will generally not uproot plants until they are being shipped, both for appearances and to minimize stress. What soil is in the pots here is clearly very dry and has not settled, indicating it was very recently added.

6. The prices don't make sense:

In cultivation, a multi-headed specimen like this would take years to grow. You'd most likely be buying it off a collector or a grower downsizing stock plants, and the price would definitely reflect that. Yet this cluster is only priced slightly higher than the single specimens.

For comparison, seed-grown plants like one below from a reputable grower were priced at $20:

It will be years before this plant resembles the other plants posted here.

7. Seller's description provides no info about the origin of the plants, which is suspect in combination with the above.

Am I 100% certain these plants are poached? No, but it seems very likely. If they are, does the seller know they're selling poached plants? Not necessarily, assuming they purchased them from someone else. But I certainly would not be giving them any money based on all of the above.