Description
Like all the Soap Plants, the Wavy-leafed Soap Plant is a perennial that grows from a bulb, which is brown, between 7 and 15 cm in diameter, slightly elongated, and covered in thick, coarse fibers. The leaves grow from the base of the plant, and can be from 20 to 70 cm long and 6 to 25 mm wide. As the plant's name indicates, their edges are generally wavy, though this is not always particularly noticeable. The flowers are borne on a long stem, normally longer than the leaves, and are from 15 to 30mm long. The six petals (actually only three of them are petals in the technical sense; the other three are sepals) are up to 35mm long and curving. They are typically white but have a noticeable mid-vein which can be purple or green in color. The six stamens are large and noticeable, and yellow or orange. The flowers are bisexual (include both female and male parts). They open only in the late afternoon or evening, remaining open during the night but closing by the morning. Pollination is by evening- or night-flying insects.
Read more about this topic: Chlorogalum Pomeridianum
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)