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kay · 02-12-2012, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sacha[_4_]

On 2012-12-01 18:21:15 +0000, kay said:

'Sacha[_4_ Wrote:
;974191']On 2012-12-01 10:33:47 +0000, David Hill
said:
snip-

Come on people, it's totally wrong for a Hyacinth, it has 3 crowns, the

flowers are starting from ground level and the individual flowers are
the wrong shape, you might as well say it is a mutated daffodil.
As for it being in the Orchid family, balderdash, again the flowers are

totally the wrong shape.-

After a bit of digging around without much success, I'm wondering if
it's some type of Spiranthes or something related to it? Actually, it
would be helpful to know where the donor has been on holiday!

Spiranthes is an orchid, so that's another non-starter!

But in appearance, not so dissimilar, so it doesn't, or didn't, seem so
clearcut. But David's Liriope appears even more likely.
-

Well, I'd have said very dissimilar! Spiranthes has the typical orchid shaped flower (like a Cymbidium in miniature), totally unlike the individual flowers on this, and as the name suggests, the flowers run down the stem in a very striking spiral. One of the striking things on the image is the stamens, and orchids in general don't have stamens - they put the pollen in little packages on the upper part of the flower.

I hadn't realised there were Spiranthes in any colour than white (the UK and Europe ones are white), but this page has a picture of a pink flowered species, and shows what I mean by the striking spiral. It also shows the orchid-ness of the flower very clearly.

Terrestrial orchids - Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust - Sydney, Australia

Liriope looks superficially similar *including things like the coloured stem), but none of the pictures I've seen have the flowers as open as that, and I don't know the plant well enough.