Triplet lilies

Description

Triteleia laxa (previously Brodiaea laxa) is a triplet lily known by several common names, including Ithuriel's spear, common triteleia and grassnut. It is native to California where it is a common wildflower, and it is occasionally found in southwestern Oregon. It bears a tall, naked stem topped with a spray of smaller stalks, each ending in a purple or blue flower. The flower is tubular, opening into a sharply six-pointed star. The plant grows from a corm which is edible and similar in taste and use as the potato. The most used common name for the species, Ithuriel's spear, is a reference to the angel Ithuriel from Milton's Paradise Lost. The genus name Triteleia is derived from Greek and means 'triplicate', a reference to its flower parts, which are in multiples of three. The epithet laxa means 'open', 'uncrowded', 'distant', 'spreading', or 'lax'. It is derived from the Latin adjective laxus, meaning 'flaccid, loose'. Triteleia is a genus of monocotyledon flowering plants also known as triplet lilies. The 16 species are native to western North America, from British Columbia south to California and east to Wyoming and Arizona, with one species in northwestern Mexico. However they are most common in California. They are perennial plants growing from a fibrous corm, roughly spherical in shape. They get their name from the fact that all parts of their flowers come in threes. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's 2009 revision placed the genus in family Asparagaceae, subfamily Brodiaeoideae (having previously placed treated Brodiaeoideae as a separate family Themidaceae). Other modern authors place it in the family Alliaceae. Both these families are in the order Asparagales. There are currently 16 recognized species in Triteleia. One species, Triteleia ixioides, has five well-defined subspecies. Varieties and subspecies have been proposed within several other Triteleia species, but these are no longer widely accepted. Some common species that are now placed in genus Triteleia were formerly placed in genus Brodiaea, and as a consequence the word "brodiaea" has been incorporated into some of their common names. Triteleia bridgesii – Bridges' brodiaea – on serpentine soils below 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in northern Sierra Nevada foothills and Klamath Range of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon Triteleia clementina – San Clemente Island triteleia – endemic to San Clemente Island, the southernmost of the Channel Islands of California