Bamboo look-alike an autumn crocus, sort of

This elegant plant in our South China Collection, in Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, looks like a fancy bamboo. But when if flowers, it is clearly not a member of the grass family, like bamboo, but a lily relative of some kind. It is sometimes called Chinese Fairy Bells, which seems fair enough.

One close relative is the Autumn Crocus, also in the family Colchicaceae. In addition to Colchicum, the Autumn Crocus, that family also includes the Australian native herbs, Burchardia and Wurmbea. And gloriosa lilies. 

Chinese Fairy Bells, or  Disporum longistylum, is from Assam in northwest India, Tibet and central China. As with bamboo, the plant spreads by rhizomes, but it shouldn't be as invasive as some of them. 

Given the species epithet 'longistylum' the receptive end of the ovary, the style, must be extending beyond the petals but in these pictures the male parts, the yellow stamens, are large and prominent. 

Those bamboo-like stems are sheathed are regular intervals with the full leaves at the top near the flowers. I presume the sheaths are reduced leaves, formed at nodes in the stem but I'm not sure.  

There are a few hybrids, such as 'Night Heron', 'Shina no tsuki' and 'Green Giant' but ours is a species, possibly collected by our curator Terry from one of her trips to China. Terry pointed this plant out to me in early October and I must ask her about its origin next time I'm walking through the South China Collection. I suspect that no matter how many years I work in this botanic garden, I'll continue to find (or be directed to) new plants (to me). 

There are twenty species in the genus Disporum, most from China. We have only one other species in our collection, Disporum sessile from Japan and a few others places. It is more commonly grown in cultivation, and includes a variegated form. 

If you happen to see a plant labelled Disporum cantoniense, it is carrying an old name for Disporum longistylum. A little more romantic perhaps, but in a colonial way.