Keyed Out #038 — Aspidistra elatior

Question 1

After the bloom fades it sets a single rounded, fleshy {berry} that ripens resting on the soil surface, rather than a dry splitting pod or a tuft of wind-borne, parachute-tipped seed.

Accepted Answer

asparagus family

Question 2

The whole plant is a leathery evergreen, its broad, parallel-veined blades rising one at a time straight from a creeping underground {rhizome}, never a net-veined broadleaf and never dying back to a dormant {bulb}.

Accepted Answer

Asparagaceae

Question 3

Its solitary fleshy bell of a flower opens right at the soil surface, half-buried in the leaf litter and capped by a broad, flat {stigma} shaped like a little round shield, borne singly on a short stalk from the ground.

Accepted Answer

Aspidistra

Question 4

Those hidden cups are coloured a dull maroon-purple and give off a musty, mushroom-like odour that lures tiny fungus gnats down to the ground to pollinate them.

Accepted Answer

Aspidistra

Question 5

Among its relatives it is the robust giant, unfurling broad, glossy blades 12 to 20 inches (30 to 50 cm) long, not the slender, tapering, smaller leaves of its forest cousins.

Accepted Answer

Aspidistra elatior

Question 6

Its ground-level flowers are comparatively large fleshy cups about 1 inch (2.5 cm) across with eight thick lobes, not the pin-head blooms of the tiniest-flowered members of the genus.

Accepted Answer

Aspidistra elatior