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Blue Funnel Lily



Blue Funnel Lily

Conservation status

Near Threatened
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Liliales
Family: Liliaceae
Genus: Androstephium
Torr.
Species

See text.

 

 

 

 

Androstephium caeruleum, is also known as the Blue Funnel Lily. A perennial herb found the United States, ranging through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. It disperses its seed by wind.

Species

Cultivation and uses

The Blue Funnel Lilly is among the first of the prairie flowers to bloom - typically in February in North Central Texas. There is great variability in the flowers of the species, and it is uncommon in its habitat, black soil prairie. Fruit set is infrequent - whether due to loss of native pollinators or self-sterility is unknown. Fruit ripens by late April and splits open, presenting the thin, flat black seeds to the wind. The seedling manifests itself as a single thin green leaf - very much like a green hair - and is easily lost in the prairie grasses among which it grows. Over the course of several years the plant progressively pulls its corm deeper and deeper into the soil until it has reached a depth of 15 to 20 centimeters. The corm was once eaten in West Texas.

References

  • Kelly Kindscher (1987), Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie, pgs 43-45.
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Blue_Funnel_Lily". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
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