Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its genus name descends from an old word for a heavy, sweet, animal-derived perfume, a nod to the faint fragrance the flowers carry in warm sun. Its species name points to a small country on the Caucasus fringe, at the eastern edge of its native range. Each tiny flower is an urn pinched almost shut at the mouth, six {tepal}s fused into a near-closed globe finished with a pale ring of little teeth. The topmost flowers of every spike are smaller, paler, and sterile, forming a bright {coma} that caps the cluster like a little flame. Held close on a warm day, the flowers give off a soft sweet scent some liken to ripe plums or fruity confectionery. Its narrow, {glabrous}, strap-shaped leaves rise straight from the ground in a floppy basal tuft, with none carried on the flowering stalk. Unusually for a spring bulb, its leaves push up in autumn and slouch through the coldest weeks before the flower stalks rise in early spring. Dozens of little urns crowd a single leafless stalk into a dense cone, stacked so tightly the spike reads as a miniature bunch of fruit. The whole plant stands just 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) tall, rising each year from a small underground {bulb}. From a handful of bulbs it multiplies by offsets and self-sown seed into broad sheets of cobalt blue that carpet the ground within a few years. Every part holds bitter {saponin}s, so browsing deer leave it alone and it upsets the stomach of anyone or any pet that eats it. Its common name marries a clustered vine fruit to another sweetly scented spring bulb it resembles in miniature.

Accepted Answer

Muscari armeniacum

Name That Plant #049