Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its foliage persists year-round as a tuft of narrow, stiff blades turned side-on in a single plane, presenting an edge rather than a face to anyone looking down on the clump. The swelling seed pod sits below the six {tepals} rather than above them, ripening into a three-angled {capsule} about 1 inch (2 to 2.5 cm) long that splits three ways. The genus name is Greek for "double male" — a count, not a compliment. Only two {anthers} carry pollen, the third {stamen} reduced to a short bare {filament} with nothing on it — a state found in no other genus of its family. Blooms break one or two at a time from a single green {spathe} at the stem tip, each lasting only a few days while the next waits behind it, so a clump stays in flower for weeks. Its species epithet says only that it resembles a South African genus that Linnaeus respelled to honour his physician father-in-law. The faintly honey-scented white flowers are 2 to 2.4 inches (5 to 6 cm) across, and the yellow blotching and fine purple veining are confined to the three smaller inner segments. It grows in heathland and open eucalypt forest from sea level to about 3,300 feet (1,000 m), across Tasmania, Victoria and southeastern New South Wales. In the wild it is often shy-flowering for years, then blooms heavily in the season after a bushfire passes through. Nurseries often stand it beside the South African fortnight lilies it resembles, but it never shows their broad violet petal-like style arms or their yellow-and-brown streaked outer segments. Tasmania's fire service lists this white-flowered clumping perennial as low-flammability and fit to plant inside a house protection zone, and its genus holds just one other species, a broader-leaved Tasmanian endemic of sub-alpine ground.

Accepted Answer

Diplarrena moraea

Name That Plant #094