Plant in light to moderate shade (even on the coast) with regular irrigation in a well-drained soil – as with others in this family it does not need rich soil and can even tolerate clay so long as it can drain freely. Hardy to at least 16°F - it survived temperatures almost this low (18°F) with no damage in our garden in the December 1990 Christmas freeze. Great as a small-scale groundcover or an accent plant in a shaded rock garden or container.

Talbotia elegans grow native in seeps on cliffs in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, where there are reports of other color flowers and larger flowering forms, but the plant that has been in cultivation in California for many years is this smaller white flowering form. It is in the Velloziaceae family and closely related to the Screw Pines, Pandanus sp. (both within the Order Pandanales) from the southern hemisphere (Africa and South America) that was named to honor a Portuguese naturalist named Velloz. Vellozia elegans was the name described by the British botanist John Gilbert Baker for this plant in 1875. The old-world species of the family were reclassified and placed in the genus Talbotia in 1975 in a monograph of the Family in The Kew Bulletin by Lyman Smith and Edward Ayensu (V.29 N1). Interestingly, Talbotia was the name the plant was actually first described as by the Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour in 1868 with the name honoring the British scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society, the Honorable William Henry Fox Talbot, who bought the specimen of this plant to Balfour from his garden in 1866. It was believed at the time to have been raised from seed from either the Cape or from Madagascar. Plants from the Botanical Gardens at Edinburgh were sent to Kew where it first flowered in 1869. The specific epithet refers to the overall elegant nature of this plant.

The name Barbacenia elegans had also previously been applied to this plant but now all plants in the genus Barbacenia are from South America. It has also been previously known as Hypoxis barbacenioides, though the genera Hypoxis is now considered only distantly related in its own family, or in the Asparagaceae, with similarities due to convergent evolution. In the April 2013 issue of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society there was an article titled "A revision of African Velloziaceae based on leaf anatomy characters and rbcL nucleotide sequences" (V. 172 N. 1) that included all of the African Velloziaceae in the genus Xerophyta, making the current name for this plant Xerophyta elegans. The name Xerophyta is from Ancient Greek words 'xeros' meaning "dry" 'phutón' meaning plant in reference to how dry this plant can grow - studies on these plants indicate that under dry conditions the leaves are able to revive and restart their photosynthetic processes. The name change to Xerophyta has been generally but not universally accepted and we continue to use the name Talbotia elegans for this plant that we first received as Vellozia elegans in 1984 from John Bleck at the University of California Biology Greenhouses. Mr. Bleck was maintaining this plant as a representative of the Velloziaceae family for use by the plant taxonomy courses at the University. 

The information displayed on this page about Talbotia elegans is based on the research we have conducted about it in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about this plant as it grows in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant have performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we have received from others and welcome hearing from anyone with information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information that will aid others to better grow it.