amaryllis

The Amaryllis belladonna in the turning circle is about to flower.  Walking past the spot the other day I noticed that a fat, pink tinged stem with a tightly furled bud on top had suddenly appeared out of the bare gravel.  That's the nature of Amaryllis, pink flowers in autumn followed by leaves, then a blank period in summer when there's nothing visible above ground at all.

It's a bulb, originating in South Africa's south western cape, where it forms part of the rich and extraordinary vegetation called the fynbos.  If I were inclined to long distance travel, which I'm not, the fynbos is one of the things I should like to see.  Because I knew it hailed from South Africa I had my Amaryllis in a largish pot for a long time, before discovering that it should be hardy in this part of Essex except in a bad winter, and deciding that the largish pot did not justify its space in either the greenhouse or conservatory, since it never seemed to flower.

One reason for that was probably failure to water it properly.  Traditional garden bulbs like daffodils and hyacinths are easy.  You know to start them into the growth in the autumn, the flowers appear while the leaves are still green and healthy, then everything dies back and you can give them a dry rest in the summer before starting again next autumn.  With the bulbous species that flower from bare earth then produce their leaves at a different time I'm left struggling to remember when I should water them, and when they need to be dry.  In my anxiety to avoid over watering the Amaryllis pot at times when the bulbs were trying to rest I probably didn't water it enough.  There have been times when I've been convinced it must have rotted away and died, before investigating the pot and discovering that the compost was full of roots, and on the whole I haven't felt in synch with its life cycle.

Out in the gravel, which is extremely free draining, it manages its own watering.  Or at least, when I see leaves I might water them occasionally while I've got the hose out to do the pots, but it can manage its own period of dormancy without me having to worry about flooding it at inappropriate moments.  That was the plan, and if the plan failed and the plant died it wouldn't be too much of a blow, since it never seemed to flower under the previous pot regime.  It went out in the spring, and the leaves looked fine for a while then disappeared, and I wondered vaguely whether that was indeed its dormant period or if the move had been too much for it.  And then a few days ago a stalk suddenly appeared.  I was rather jealous after noticing at the Chatto wildlife fair that there was one coming up in the gravel garden there with several stalks, then this morning I saw that mine was making a second.

The flowers when they open should be pink trumpets, held in clusters at the top of the stalks.  They are quite similar to those of Hippeastrum, which is grown in this country as a house plant and sometimes called Amaryllis.  Most confusing.  But they are different things, and if you plant your Hippeastrum outside in Essex then come the winter it will most definitely die, no matter how free draining your gravel.

There is a sensible looking web page here with scholarly references and everything if you want to know more.  At moments like this, when I've just read up on Amaryllis, it seems obvious that if it were still in a pot the time to withhold water would be summer, after the leaves had died down, since it is summer dormant, but in real time as I dragged hoses round dozens of pots it was difficult to remember what I was supposed to do with those where nothing was apparently growing.  I should have stuck labels in them with care instructions, preferably written in script that I could decipher while standing at arm's length and not just pencil scribbles on stick in plant labels so that I had to be bend over and pull the label out of the pot to read.

And now I am going to take a moment to explore the gardening in mediterranean climates worldwide website further.  It looks promising.