Alstroemeria hookeri blooms close to the ground on short plants in Chile’s Chinchilla Reserve near Illapel.

Alstroemerias are a family of South American plants with about 15 to 20 representatives in Chile. Sometimes called Peruvian lilies, they are not limited to living in Peru, and some have been heavily hybridized and are now quite popular in the cut flower trade worldwide. I have tentatively identified this short species growing in the transitional zones between coastal chaparral and the Atacama Desert near the town of Illapel as possibly being Alstroemeria hookeri, which has a couple of color forms. Quite lovely and compact at only about 8 inches/20 cm tall, I found it flowering after the foliage has mostly died back in late spring.

These pics were taken in the dry year of October 2016, which was my first trip to Chile. We saw no other Alstroemerias that year, although Chile does have nearly two dozen species, many of which we saw on a second trip a year later in October 2017. That year was much wetter, and many more of these and numerous other flowering species were evident as a result of being coaxed forth by rainfall.

Paler color form with more yellow, and less of a pink blush.

As with many xeric plants, A. hookeri will put out some leaves to photosynthesize early on, in late fall or early winter. Then when it comes time to bloom as spring approaches, it tends to shed those leaves and bloom leafless, to conserve water in a drying and warming landscape. The plants utilize stored reserves of food in the rhizomatous root systems to set seeds, and probably also photosynthesize a small amount of food in the remaining green stem tissues. All in the name of water efficiency.