Wachendorfia is a genus of perennial herbaceous plants that is assigned to the bloodroot family. The plants have a perennial rootstock with red sap.
Wachendorfia thyrsiflora is a must for the marshy garden. It is a tall evergreen geophyte (perennial plant with underground buds). The rootstock is a branched, fleshy rhizome with clusters of thin adventitious roots at the nodes. The rhizome is a distinctive red colour, containing a red fluid rich in arylphenalenone pigments. The leaves are firm, hairless, entire and broadly sword-shaped, with very distinctive longitudinally pleated leaf blades. The inflorescence is a dense cylindrical panicle of bright golden-yellow flowers on a tall sturdy stalk. Flowers are produced from spring until mid-summer (September - December). The leaves are from 0.6 to 1 m tall, and the flower stalks can reach up to 2.5 m in height.
Derivation of name and historical aspects
The Haemodoraceae or bloodwort family gets its rather alarming name from the red cell-sap found in the roots which colours the rootstock red (haima is Greek for blood and dôran means gift; wort is old English for a plant; Haemodorum is the Australian genus on which this family is based). It consists of 13 genera found in Australia, southern Africa and tropical America, the Australian representative most familiar to gardeners being Anigozanthos, the kangaroo's paw.
The genus Wachendorfia is endemic to southern Africa and occurs only in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. It is a small genus of four species: Wachendorfia brachyandra, Wachendorfia multiflora (= W. parviflora), a very variable species, Wachendorfia paniculata (including Wachendorfia graminifolia, now sunk into this species), and Wachendorfia thyrsiflora. All but Wachendorfia thyrsiflora (which is evergreen) are winter-growing and summer-dormant.
The genus is named in commemoration of E.J. von Wachendorff, the 18th century professor of botany and chemistry at Utrecht. The specific name thyrsiflora means that it has flowers in a thyrse. A thyrse is an inflorescence with a racemose primary axis and cymose lateral axes, i.e. the main branch is ever-growing, producing new flowers all the time with the youngest at the top, and it has side branches which end in a terminal flower with any successive flowers behind it.