PlantFiles: Small Grass-tree, Snake Charmer
Xanthorrhoea minor

This is the little cousin of the Australian grass-trees. It never develops a woody stem, but the tuft of grass-like leaves sits on the ground. Like its larger cousins, it puts up a tall slender flower spike, which increases the height of the plant from under a metre to occasionally over two metres. The flowers have a strong scent of honey and are attractive to bees and nectar-feeding birds. Unlike the larger grass-trees, this species is not limited to a single flower spike and multiple flower spikes are fairly common. These sometimes twist round each other as they ascend and this leads to the common name of Snake Charmer as the intertwined flower stems suggest snakes twisting together.
In Morwell National Park, the largest plants of the Tall Greenhood orchid grow up through the clumps of Little Grass-tree. We think this is because the grass-tree protects them from the browsing of the Swamp Wallabies, which love to eat orchids.
Little Grass-trees are fairly readily grown from seed and I have three established in my garden. One has flowered three time now (the first time after about 5 years) and the year before last, it produced eleven flowering stems on the single plant. The other two have not flowered yet despite being fifteen years in the ground!