Thysanotus juncifolius
Thysanotus juncifolius, commonly known as branching fringe lily, is a species of flowering plant in the Asparagaceae family, and is endemic to Australia. It is a herb with a small horizontal rhizome and fibrous roots, up to three linear leaves, and flowering stems with up to five umbels of pink to mauve flowers with spreading perianth segments, fringed petals and six stamens.
Description
Thysanotus juncifolius is a herb with a horizontal rhizome long and fibrous roots, that typically grows to a height of up to about. It has up to three linear leaves long, produced annually or occasionally absent. The flowering stems are striated, long, sometimes with two or three branches with up to five pink to mauve flowers in up to five umbels on the ends, each flower on a pedicel long. The tepals are long, the sepals wide and the petals wide with a fringe up to long. There are six stamens shorter than the petals, the three outer anthers straight and long and the inner anthers curved, long. Flowering occurs from September to March, and the fruit is a capsule about in diameter containing cylindrical seeds long and in diameter with a yellowish aril.
Taxonomy
This species was first described in 1808 by Richard Anthony Salisbury, who gave it the name Chlamysporum juncifolium in The Paradisus Londinensis. In 1955, James Hamlyn Willis and Arthur Bertram Court transferred the species to Thysanotus as T. juncifolius in the journal Muelleria.
Distribution and habitat
Thysanotus juncifolius grows in a range of habitats from tall forest to open mallee and heath, in sandy gravel and shallow loam to deep sand and gravel in south-eastern Queensland, coastal regions near Sydney and inland to the Blue Mountains, the far east of Victoria, and Ninety Mile Desert, Fleurieu and Eyre Peninsulas and Kangaroo Island of South Australia.