A white Friday: Spider lily

I have long been contemplating on posting white flowers on a Friday. I will shelve the other white flowers this time and contemplate on just one. This is actually ordinary and is also available in temperate climates, the Spider Lily, Hymenocalis spp.  Autumn Belle of My Nice Garden inspired me again with this because of her very beautiful yellow daylily. The white Hymenocallis has many species and varieties.  It is a very versatile plant, for it grows well in shade, semi-shade and in full sun. It is a tropical plant, having it’s origins in South America. This means that in its natural state it grows in soil with a fair degree of moisture most of the time. For a brief description please click  here. For cultural practices please view here, or read here.

Spider plant is a common name which is really very common as many lilies are called spider lilies. There are whites and reds. Spider lilies, when you consult the literatures have many genuses. Some are licorice,  others are hymenocallis, some are crinum. And of course there are more species for each genus. That is the difficulty of using the common name for plants, many sectors or countries have common names which refer to many plants of very different species or genus. This difficulty is erased by using the scientific name, or binomial nomenclature, which refers to the Genus and species of the plant. This is the plant's ID, so wherever they go (from Australia to Zimbabwe) they are known by that name. So the best way is to put the Scientific name enclosed in parenthesis after the common name; e.g. spider lily (Hymenocallis littoralis). Genus starts with capital letter and species starts with small letter. Scientific names are written either in italics or underlined.

Scientific names seem so difficult to pronounce, write or memorize, but plant kingdom will be more chaotic if we are not using this binomial classification. Let us be thankful to Carl Von Linnaeus for starting this orderly classification. He was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. For more about Linnaeus please read here. 

Look at those beautifully swaying delicate petals and the upright proud stamens.

The center looks so inviting even for a fly to leave its eggs maybe.

The visitor above is different from the previous one. They really seem to like this spider lily.

I would love to post this to the Blooming Friday hosted by Katarina of Roses and Stuff. The theme is something old and something new, so i discussed something about Carl Von Linnaeus and his binomial nomenclature, which is really very old. My flowers are new! What about that. (hahahaha)