Saturday scenes and scenery: Mystery plant

In the spring (and it is spring here in San Francisco -- eat your hearts out, snow dwellers!), these things come out in our tiny garden. This post is a request to the blog's visitors: can anyone give me the name of this plant?


The flowers start out nestled among green leaves -- and mostly green themselves.


After a few days, the blooms push out into the light.


The white gauzy background is a flowering plum tree.


Here's the whole plant. We know this was put in by South African gardeners -- but we don't know it's name. Can anyone help?