Muticoloured squill catches my attention in winter sun

This gaily coloured squill has the common name of Four-coloured Opal Flower. It's a Lachenalia, or Cape Cowslip, closely related to bluebells and grape hyacinths.

Each flower is banded with four lolly-like colours, hence the common name and the botanical tag 'quadricolor': used either as a species (Lachenalia quadricolor; e.g. by the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK) or variety (Lachenalia aloides var. quadricolor; by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew).

When treated as a variety, the species it is plugged into, aloides, means 'aloe-like' and you can see the the similarity in the fleshiness and colour of the flower.

The leaves of all, or most Lachenalia, are spotted. Which is, as it happens, a good spotting character for the genus, alongside the tubular flowers with that upper skirt of shorter 'tepals' (red, yellow then tipped green...).

We grow yellow and white flowered Lachenalia at the Melbourne Gardens - Lachenalia aloides var. aurea and Lachenalia ensifolia subsp. ensifolia respectively - but none of this multicoloured form. So the plants photographed here are from a home garden not far from where I live (and apologies to the owners for exposing the weedy oxalis backdrop when I took these pictures in late June 2020).

Lachenalia come from southern Africa, where there at 120 species, mostly around the southwest Cape area but extending into Namibia. This is one has perhaps the most strikingly coloured flowers, but as you can see here in the nursery at Karoo Desert National Botanic Gardens in South Africa (photographed in 2018), there are lots of other, often softer, hues.

Some species of Lachenalia are what we call pyrophytes, needing fire to induce flowering and leaves but the Four-coloured Opal Flower seems happy to do its thing each year without the intervention of heat, smoke or flames.

Quite a few of the Lachenalia flower in winter, and this one was at its peak in June and July. That too resonates with the aloe, also a stand out at that time of year.

By the way, I do hope I have the name right on this plant. Certainly a Lachenalia (although I know some are keen to combine it with another genus, named after princess in Greek mythology, Polyxena). The Plant Trust, of which I am Patron, registers national collections of various plants and the Lachenalia collection is held by the current Treasurer, Don Journet. I have not doubt he, or fellow members of the Trust, will correct me if I have anything not quite right.