Albuca spiralis L.f. is distributed in the northwestern and southwestern Cape from Namaqualand to the Cape Peninsula and to the eastern Little Karoo, South Africa, growing in sandy and loamy soils. The flowers are green with pale yellow margins, nodding, sweetly scented, reportedly of butter and vanilla! The smell can be quite strong on a warm sunny day. The peduncle has glandular hairs at the base. Leaves are narrow, straight to wavy like a snake to spirally twisted with glandular hairs. The degree of spiral depends on the clone and the amount of sunlight the plant receives when the leaves started growing. Recommendations for more leaf curling are a very lean mix, not a lot of water, and a lot of light. Height: 20-40 cm. Plants are winter-growing and summer-dormant, flowering late winter to mid-spring (August-October). Some of the members of the pbs list who have grown this species in the Northern Hemisphere have found that dormancy and time of flowering varies with the plant and is not entirely predictable. The first photo below was taken in habitat in the Kamiesberg, Namaqualand by Andrew Harvie. The second photo is from the book Plants of the Klein Karoo courtesy of Jan and Anne Lise Schutte-Vlok.
Photos 1-6 were taken by Nhu Nguyen showing various leaf morphologies from seed-raised plants.
The photos below were taken by Nhu Nguyen. Photo 6 shows three-month-old seedlings (seeds from 2007 PBS Seed Sale) grown by Nhu Nguyen. The crop of adults could be seen in photo 3 taken in 2013. It took about 4 years for this species to mature from seeds.
