A friend of a friend of mine sent this in to see if I could identify it, but I'm stumped. Here's what she sent: It has Aspidistra "like" leaves, but grows to 3 - 4 feet at which time I cut back. I has flowered 3 times, twice this summer outside and was pollinated and now has red seeds. The flower was ivory white and shaped like a loose, widely spaced hyacinth, extremely fragrant, almost overwhelming. Can you help?
The familiar species of Bletilla produce characteristically shaped orchid flowers not noted especially for fragrance, different leaves from this plant and the same initially green pods that split open to release dust like seeds that other orchids have.
Can you open one of those fruits and show us what is inside ? Do you know how roots look like? The picture of the base of the plant would help too.
Wild guess: some Hosta relation? H. plantaginea ('August lily'; plantain lily) is white-flowered and fragrant. Seed heads do not resemble those pictured above... As I said---wild guess!
I'm still waiting on a reply about about additional plant characteristics. Thanks for taking stabs at it!
Maybe she meant the inflorescences were on a stalk, hyacinth-like. The description of the leaves like Aspidistra was apt, and did nail the Asparagaceae family. I was so sure that those stalked leaves didn't look like Dracaena that I didn't look there.
She is thrilled to finally have a name for her plant--she couldn't wait to tell her sister, who gave her the cutting 4o years ago! Thanks, everyone, for helping with this!
