With the warm and now wet spring we're having, many local plants are flowering and fruiting brilliantly. It's an excellent time to observe local native plants and see what they're up to.
One local plant that is doing particularly well is the Swamp Lily or Crinum pedunculatum. This robust, salt- and wind-tolerant lily is flowering all around the place right now, including at the beach at North Wollongong, at Seven Mile Beach, and many other places.
Its flowers are so spectacular, it's worth a visit to check them out.
Swamp Lily is common and widespread across Illawarra, growing in swamps and along stream beds, and also in exposed rocky situations along the coast. Its distribution indicates that it is robust and resilient, and that it can survive dry periods and exposure to salt-laden winds. There are scattered individuals just south of the Continental Pool at North Wollongong Beach.
This beautiful large plant really comes into its own when it flowers.
Flowers are borne in umbels containing between 10 and 40 individual flowers. Each flower has narrow creamy-white petals and at its centre the filaments (a component of the stamens, or male reproductive parts of the flower) are long (up to around 6.5cm long) and coloured pink, purple or reddish in colour, adding to the decorative nature of the flowers.
The fruit are also quite appealing, being large, rounded and green often tinged with pinks, yellows and orange-reds.
One thing to be aware of with this plant is that it is just one of about 100 species in the Crinum genus, hailing from Australasia, Africa and the Americas, and that many exotic Crinum species are cultivated and/or sold as cut flowers. It is possible to confuse these species, particularly when they're not in flower.
I have seen situations where someone has planted a Crinum, believing it to be Swamp Lily, only to find, when it flowers, that it is another species. The Southern African Natal Lily (C. moorei) has naturalised in the Blue Mountains, for example, and Spider Lily (Crinum asiaticum) is sometimes cultivated in gardens.
So if you'd like to grow the local native species, make sure you obtain your plants from a reputable nursery or other source. Or, rather than cultivating them, go and enjoy these beautiful lilies wherever they've decided to grow themselves.
