I'm not quite sure what it is. It is something like a houseleek - click on the tiny pic of its base for a bigger view, or here for a fuller view. I bought it in a village sale a few years back and it has sat outside come sun, rain and drought. This is the first year it has flowered. It reminds me of asphodel somewhat, though on a much smaller scale, and only really in the way the flowers look when closed up. I'm pretty sure they aren't related.
More Friday Fabulous Flowers can be found at the Phytophactor's. I'm going to ask him what mine is, if no-one volunteers.
Update: TPP himself stops by, and tells me its a Haworthia. And looking at wiki it appears to be "subfamily Asphodeloideae" so maybe I wasn't so wrong. Its fairly similar to this.
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It's a species of Haworthia, a leaf succulent from the lily family (unless phylogenetically repositioned lately). The one you picture looks like it has light windows in its leaves sort of like the ones mentioned recently. Other species have really tough leaves. But this is sort of embarrassing having someone doing FFFs for me.
[Thanks! Isn't the internet a wonderful thing.
As to FFF, do feel free to steal it if you like :-)
Light windows: I'm slightly dubious about that. If you look at the leaves closer - I took another one - its like the insides are translucent, and the green on the outside is sort of stretched, almost rubbed-off looking. What do you think? -W]
Break a leaf off, an outer one, and hold it up so that it is illuminated from behind. The dark green looking areas near the apex are actually translucent allowing light down into the thick tissue within.
[Hmm. I tried that, and it wasn't fully convincing. But I'm in a bit of a rush now, and the light is fading. I will experiment further -W]
Took a close look at the image of the rosette of leaves. Absolutely certain about the leaf windows. Hey, who's the expert?
The elegant little flower shown here is beautiful. The post is very useful