By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I’m always delighted when I discover an aspidistra flower—a surprise I rank right up there with noticing a shooting star or finding a robin's nest with eggs in it.

It’s the flower’s location that strikes me: right at ground (or potting-soil) level. It turns out that the blooms are pollinated by amphipods, which are tiny terrestrial relatives of both fleas and shrimp.

My aspidistras (A. elatior, also called cast iron plants because they grow in low light with minimal care) seem to produce at least a couple of rounds of bloom per year. My garden notes say that one pot full of them flowered in June, and now they're at it again in November. 

If you haven’t grown this plant, it’s one of the easiest indoor subjects around, thriving on a certain amount of controlled neglect. If you kill one of these, it will almost certainly be a long slow demise caused by overwatering. The good news is that all you have to do to reverse the process is sharply curtail your irrigation. 

It was once thought that there were only a few kinds of aspidistra, all from Asia, but recently several dozen more species have turned up, and some have started to work their way into the nursery trade. You can buy the plain green species, plus several named varieties that differ mostly in kind and intensity of variegation from Plant Delights Nursery. 

Whatever kind you get, check out the soil every time you water. Sooner or later, a rather wonderful flower will appear.