It’s been a while since I did any sort of plant profile so, I thought I’d talk about the blue flax lily, or Dianella cerulea. This is a lovely native of the Sydney area and beyond. Both the common name and second part of the binomial (Latin) name are due to the colour of these lovely flowers.
The blue flax lily is a tufted, perennial herb that reaches around 50cm tall that has a range of different growth forms, one of which can sprawl quite far across the garden bed it’s in. Naturally, blue flax lily appears in woodland on sandstone, and is happy in full sun and dappled shade. You will see this growing in Tasmania in the south all the way up to Queensland in the north.
The leaves are long and scrappy-they can be up to 70 cm long by up to 25 mm wide. The veins in the leaves can be clearly seen, and have very finely serrated margins (which means it looks like the leaf edges have tiny teeth), but you can rarely see this as they are tiny.
The flowers are rather small and appear from September to November. They are a rather nice blue colour with yellow anthers. This is where the plant gets both its common and binomial names from-cerulea is the Latin word for blue. The flowers appear in an inflorescence on a stem appearing from the centre of the leaves.
In terms of maintenance, there is little to do once it’s established in Sydney. As it’s native to the area, the blue flax lily is perfectly happy with the conditions here. There are things that will help it to thrive. If you have dry conditions, then the plant will benefit from a deep infrequent watering which encourages plant roots to grow deeper into the soil helping to tolerate drought better. You can also fertilise, preferably with organic fertilisers, but again, the plants are pretty tough and cope well on their own. The only really big thing you will have to do over time is remove the dead leaves, but if you do this as the leaves die, then you will keep the plant looking good, rather than becoming a scruffy mess.
I do like the flax lily, I have to say. It’s one of those plants that is slightly on the wild side, but most Australian plants are. The main reasons for likening it are the fact that you can have them in your garden and they just get on with doing their thing without being a princess. The flowers, while rather small and delicate, the contrast nicely with the leaves in spring. Provided the soil has decent drainage, and the plants get enough water and nutrients, then these plants will perform really well.
