Sighted by my helper León Hernández, on his way from the Caltrain station to my house day before yesterday: stunningly blue flowers just mixed in with some blooming wild grass under a tree out on the street in front of Verve Coffee Roasters (162 University Ave. — on the south side, just east of High St.). I had no idea what they might be, so yesterday on his way to my house he took some photos on his phone, two of which I’ll post below.
There were a lot of them, and they were certainly beautiful: little balloons of intense blue — flax blue — on a plant with strap-like leaves. I maintained that I’d never seen anything like them, but that turns out to be provably false, since I posted about a closely related plant in Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden back in 2019. Memory is a fickle thing.
While I was gearing up to start a search for the name of the plant, León was way out in front of me. working his phone like a demon until he nailed Dianella tasmanica. From Wikipedia:
Dianella tasmanica, commonly known as the Tasman flax-lily or Tasmanian flax-lily is a herbaceous strappy perennial herb of the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae, found in southeastern Australia including Tasmania. It has leaves to 80 cm, and a flower stem to 1.5 m. Blue flowers in spring and summer are followed by violet berries. It adapts readily to cultivation and is commonly seen in Australian gardens.
D. tasmanica is available from California plant growers (for example, San Marcos Growers in Santa Barbara), some of which also carry the closely related D. caerulea, which was the plant I saw at Gamble Gardens.
Two D. tasmanica photos from León:
(#1) Just the flax-lilies
(#2) Flax-lilies interspersed with showy grasses
Now, that Gamble Garden report: my 8/15/19 posting “Blue and black at the Gamble Garden’:
(#3) Blue flax-lilyDianella caerulea, commonly known as the blue flax-lily, blueberry lily, or paroo lily, is a perennial herb of the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae [the subfamily of daylily plants], found across the eastern states of Australia and Tasmania. It is a herbaceous strappy perennial plant to a metre high, with dark green blade-like leaves to 70 cm long. Blue flowers in spring and summer are followed by indigo-coloured berries. It adapts readily to cultivation and is commonly seen in Australian gardens and amenities plantings.
July 26, 2023 at 10:05 am |
I planted some dianella, but the “finely toothed” leaves were razor-sharp. It was a tough little plant, but I didn’t bother to rescue it when the sewer line got replaced.