We’re just wrapping up the flowering of the “starfish” group of cast iron plant species. While none are reliably winter hardy in the ground here in Zone 7b/8a, they make amazing house plants. The first and second are Aspidistra pulchella, and the final two images are Aspidistra radiata. The giant upright purple flower buds on A. radiata, are the second largest we’ve ever seen in the genus behind Aspidistra grandiflora , and the open flowers are nearly double the size of the previous species.
These ‘starfish’ are definitely not from the Echinodermata taxa, a telling sign being they don’t have a spiny ‘dermis’. It might be interesting to see if this group of starfish cast iron, like their namesake, can regenerate an entire new plant from a broken fragment of their radial ‘arm-like’ flower structure.
Starfish regenerating from a broken arm…..