Posted by
ILPARW (southeast Pennsylvania - Zone 6b) on Jul 14, 2021 11:07 AM concerning plant:
I have not yet seen this most interesting, really cool perennial plant myself, but a person from the Wild Ones Natural Landscapers, J Shiffler, in southeast Pennsylvania went on a botanical trip in the pine barrens of southern New Jersey and took a video of the trip, including still photos, and briefly showed a good specimen of this species in bloom in June. She sent me copies of the photos of the plant that I could post. It looks sort of like a tall ornamental onion with white flowers in a rounded cluster and basal leaves that are grassy. It is an uncommon species that is native from southern New Jersey & Maryland & West Virginia down to Tennessee & northern Alabama & Georgia in dry sandy pinelands and in mountainous dry pine-oak woods. The round ball of 6-petal, starry, white flowers blooms at the top of a tall scape in late May -- June; and the flowers bloom from bottom upwards. The basal leaves are narrow and about 12 to 20 inches long and form a bristly, evergreen, grassy clump. The plant bears tuberous rhizomes that help the plant spread. Eastern Turkeysbeard, also called Grass-leaved Helonias and Mountain Asphodel, dies after bearing mature fruit, but the plant survives by coming up nearby from the big underground stems (rhizomes). The Mount Cuba Center in northern Delaware is supposed to have some plants of this in their arboretum. A mail order nursery called Gardens of the Blue Ridge in Danielsville, Georgia sell some plants. However, it is not an easy ornamental to grow by needing sandy, very acid soil. The Blue Ridge Nursery warns that it is slow to establish and takes about 2 or 3 years before it takes off in growth.