Eriospermum dregei

This is a tiny plant, definitely in the odd, not showy category: my favourite!

Each year the leaf dies sometime around July, and sprouts again in late August or so (in my climate, that is, I have two friends growing it in the southern U.S.-very different pattern!); if it were mature, it probably should flower in that gap; mine is not mature, as you can see by the leaf which does not yet have enations--odd growths peculiar to some members of this South African genus--they appear to have multiple leaves or leafy/stemmy structures, but in fact they are outgrowths of a single leaf--some times resembling a bushy green tail, antlers, etc; on this one they look kind of like fuzzy parsley--see here what a mature plant looks like...

http://www.bulbsociety.org/GALLERY_OF_THE_WORLDS_BULBS/GRAPHICS/Eriospermum/Eriospermum_dregei/Eriospermum_dregei.html

I raised my tuber to the surface when I got it a couple of years ago, I have a feeling, though, that all the activity is now somewhere farther down! as you can see, it looks dry and woody, which it did not at first, and the visible part of the tuber has not grown that i have noticed...

I have only had one other Eriospermum-- E paradoxum, which I killed, probably too dry, and I have had at least 5 packets of seed, none of which produced a single germination--unless I was doing something horribly wrong (which I could believe, but not that wrong!) this was presumably not fresh seed, which is supposed to be essential for this, as many South African 'bulb' species--that is why the plant flowers just before the growing season, to produce seed during the growing season when conditions are right for germination!