Description
(syn. Anthericum plumosum (but NOT Anthericum ramosum), Bottionea thysanthoides, Trichopetalum gracile, Trichopetalum stellatum)
Trichopetalum plumosum is one of only two species in the genus from South America. It comes from coastal Chile, where it grows in a dry, Mediterranean climate. It produces slender stems about 20-25cm tall which bear a small cluster of white flowers, in April and May.
This simple description doesn’t do the flowers justice, as the six petals are differentiated into two sets of three. The outermost three have a white basal colour overlaid with green lines in the central portion but with the edges remaining white. The inners are very different with the white portion along the edge, finely dissected and feathered into wonderful wispy plumes and filaments. This haze of threads site around an deep green ovary with a yellowish style at the end and bright golden-yellow to near orange anthers, all in miniature; the flowers are at most 15mm across.
In cultivation, it likes full light when it is growing and grows readily on a Mediterranean cycle, of summer-dry, winter moist in a well-drained, sandy loam-based compost, springing from and dying back to a cluster of tiny tubers in summer. Ideal for a pot in view of its slender growths and small tubers, so several can be fitted in even a small pot. We do not regard it as reliably hardy but other growers have reported it taking sub-freezing temperatures, transiently, and being unaffected.
Raised from seed first found near Los Vilos in Chile, in fact not far from the locality of our seed stock of Rhodophiala ananuca, though the two seed collections were made by different people, some years apart.
Introduced to our lists February 2022
