Cardwell lily: the tropical Hosta (according to me)

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In my early years of gardening, I thought these plants were Hosta. Blame the books I was initiated with, which covered temperate plants, including Hosta. But hey, the leaves look like Hosta's and the white flowers looked like, to my then untrained eyes, Hosta's. It took me a few years to find out that I got the identification wrong. But in my mind, I still call them Hosta 😁 Anyway, these are common garden plants in some provinces in the Philippines, although apparently never found in the wild except in secondary forests close to human habitation, which presents the possibility of it only being an introduced ornamental. Nevertheless, it has a Tagalog name: tambal. And yes, because it's widely cultivated in the archipelago, it also has Bikolano at Bisaya names. Its English name includes Christmas lily and Cardwell lily, the latter referring to a town in Queensland where it is supposedly native. In Spanish it's called 'cebollas del monte' or 'mountain onion'.


Cardwell lilies are virtually indestructible plants and lend well to containers, but produces offsets quickly that one may need to repot and divide it after a year's worth of growth. They do go dormant at the start of the dry season then wake up from their slumber just as the rainy period begins, bringing with them bouquets of showy white flowers. If watered regularly throughout the year, the plants won't go totally dormant. But whether allowed to rest or not, the flower production is still the same.


I gotta be honest, this is one of my most neglected plants, and it's truly overshadowed by more beguiling plants, notably Amorphophallus. And yet it never fails to reward me with those immaculate flowers. Talk about unconditional love!

 Proiphys figures in folkloric medicine, with properties I myself find intriguing. If you wish to learn more, please proceed here: http://www.stuartxchange.org/Tambal.html

Comments

  1. Michael15 January 2022 at 18:16

    Cardwell is the next town south from me .. and I do remember seeing massive fields of them from the train on my first trip up to Cairns over 30 years ago.

    ReplyDelete

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