The Aspidistra genus, which includes about 100 species, was first described by botanist John Bellenden Ker Gawler in 1822 in the Botanical Register. If you struggle with deer devouring your hostas, this is a good alternative since deer ignore them when tastier food can be found.

If you decide to grow it outdoors, it can survive in USDA Hardiness Zones 7 to 11. It looks somewhat similar to a hosta, which makes it ideal if you want to bring the look of that perennial favorite indoors. The scientific name Aspidistra is Greek for “shield” and elatior is Latin for “taller,” a moniker which is used to denote the fact that this plant has tall, lance-shaped leaves. It doesn’t have a central stem, but rather, each leaf emerges from the rhizome underground. elatior grows to about three feet tall and wide, but usually stays smaller indoors. Of course, these were a different group of fungus gnats than the ones you’d probably find in your home, since the ones in the study are native to Japan, but that doesn’t mean the gnats in your neck of the woods couldn’t be tricked into bellying up to the cast-iron flower buffet if yours happens to flower.Īn evergreen perennial, A. The gnats were covered in pollen, which they transferred to the next flower as they looked for another meal. The flower, on the other hand, got what it wanted. They discovered that fungus gnats would enter the flower, likely thinking it was a mushroom that they could feed on, only to re-emerge in what one might imagine is abject disappointment at the lack of a fungal buffet. Their research was published in Ecology, the journal for the Ecological Society of America, in 2017. Botanists Kenji Suetsugu at Kobe University and Masahiro Sueyoshi at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Tsukuba, Japan, hunkered down to study the pollination of these unusual flowers.

Aspidistra flying