‘Naked ladies’ from a family of eccentrics

Press, 5 March 1982, Page 13

‘Naked ladies’ from a family of eccentrics

® DIARY

Derrick Rooney

In a word-association game with an alpine gardener, toss in "Amaryllis family." You will get a quick answer: “Narcissus.” Indeed, the narcissus family, which includes daffodils and jonquils, is one of the biggest groups in the Amaryllidaceae, which in turn is one of the world’s biggest and most important families of bulbous plants. But the daffodils, all northeners imported to our hemisphere to become the essence of the garden in spring, are only a small part of the total amaryllis family, they are the conventional branch. World-wide the family is predominantly southern, and its South African members include some of the most spectacular and most oddball plants brought into horticulture. They include the familiar belladonna lilies — the "naked ladies” of autumn, the only plants left in the original amaryllis genus — and the nerines; but there are other amaryllids of quirkier charm. Among the most eccentric are some of the species of haemanthus. These are known variously as snake-lilies, fireball lilies, torch-lilies, and paintbrushes; there are about 45 species, all African, but only a handful are cultivated, and most of these come from South Africa, where they are found from the eastern provinces of Transvaal and Natal, along the coastal belt, and up the west coast beyond the Cape of Good Hope. They fall into two broad groups — those from sum-mer-rainfall areas which flower between August and February and are greenhouse plants which must be kept ' warm and dry in winter, and those from the western Cape Province, where the rain falls in winter and the summers are dry.;, The former .groups contains the most spectacular species — some have enormous. ball-shaped heads of small, brilliantly coloured flowers and can grown a metre high. The best-known is probably the scarlet Haemanthus katherinae, which flowers in midsummer.

I have not grown it, but a friend who has done so for some years tells me it is not difficult as long as it is allowed to dry" off and rest in winter. Sima Eliovsen’s “South African Flowers for Gardens” describes H. katherinae and related species as hardy, but “hardy” is a relative term and these plants will certainly not stand Canterbury winters without protection, except in the mildest areas. The flowerheads appear at the tips of the stems and the leaves, which may be 45cm long and

half as wide, sprout from the sides.

The autumn-flowering haemanthus, to the contrary, conform to what we have come to expect as the standard behaviour of South African amaryllids — they mostly shed their leaves in summer, and push up their naked flower-stems through bare soil in March or later. After the flowrs come the leaves, which spring directly from the tops of the bulbs. Like some of the more choice nerines, they suffer from irregularity— in some years they just don't flower at all.

The autumn-flowering haemanthus are rare plants. The bulbs are slow to reach flowering size, and even slower to multiply, even Haemanthus coccineus, the “March-flower” of the western Cape Province, and the best-known species, is rarely offered in nurseries, and when it is obtainable the price is apt to be prohibitive. So I know it only from photographs. However, I do grow its close cousin, H. Rotundifolius, which'is perhaps the most irresistibly eccentric species. It flowers in late autumn from the bare ground (in my case, potting mix) and afterwards grows two leaves only, each season. But whereas the leaves of H. coccineus are strap-shaped and may reach a length of 75cm, those of H. rotundifolius are thick, fleshy, and perfectly round, like upside-down plates.

Neither of these species is regarded as hardy, even in South Africa, but I recall seeing, years ago, H. rotundifolius growing outdoors in a Christchurch garden, where it survived several winters and even flowered, though eventually a run of extrasharp frosts battered it so severely that its consciencestricken owner took it indoors.

Another species that I grown is H. albifloss, the “shaving-brush plant,” which is seldom sold in nurseries but gets around because it is one of those obliging potplants that are easy to multiply by division. It, too, is autumn flowering, and is in bud now. Thought it is widely cultivated outdoors in -the milder parts of Australia and in the North Island, it is not .hardy in Canterbury, and I am on the second time round with it, having successfully begged a second bulb from the original donor after having absent-mindedly left the first out in a hard frost, which converted it to instant mush.

It is a smaller plant than the others, and possibly the only evergreen species; it does not shed its leaves in summer, even if dried off. I give it a little water year round, but more in late winter and spring than summer, and I protect it from frost. Even when it is not flowering it is quite a striking plant, because the leaves, broadly, strap-shaped, are

deep green and fleshy and have silvery-white hairs along the edges — one of. the identification points of the species.

The flowers, when they come, look like overgrown shaving brushes, with silvery white bracts and big bunches of creamy yellow filaments; not spectacular, perhaps, but impossible to ignore — space fiction flowers, straight out of “Star Wars.”

Closely related to the haemanthus, and similarly rare, are the species of brunsvigia and boophane. Brunsvigias, which look like overgrown nerines with a double dose of whatever it is that makes nerines spectacular flowers of autumn, are listed by bulb nurseries from time to time at prices that reflect their rarity. I have just acquired a single bulb of Brunsvigia josephinae, one of the best species, but have not yet had it long enough to decide what treatment suits it best.

Boophane, alas, I know only from photographs — most species look like blownup haemanthus with petals; No New Zealand bulb grower, as far as I know, lists any, so unless there are plants in a few succulent collections the boophanes might as well be considered a lost cause in this country. I don’t even know how to pronouce the names. I do know how to pronounce — and by now, I hope, grown — another rarish amaryllid, Clivia miniata;

it is not, as most people say it, clivia with the long “i” but cly-via, as in Lady Clive, after whom it was named.

This South African has deep green, strap-shaped leaves arid, in spring, heads of trumpet-shaped flowers. It looks like a giant agapanthus, but is more closely related to the haemanthuses, and in Bailey’s arrangement of the amaryllis family is placed next to haemanthus. There are four species, of which Clivia miniata is the most frequently cultivated and probably the most beautiful. The flowers of wild plants are said to vary from pale orange to cinnabar red; a yellow form also occurs. In New Zealand the form usually, grown has flowers in a very soft, pure orange shade; some hybrids with flowers ranging from bright orange to red have been offered recently — at a price — by several nurseries but those I have seen were no

improvement on the species. As with most other bulbous plants, a period of dormancy is necessary to push Clivia miniata into flowering; this is best induced by gradually drying off the plant in autumn. Watering need not be resumed until signs of growth, or flower-buds, appear in late winter. Clivia bulbs are almost non-exis-tent, being reduced to mere swollen basal-plates, but the roots are fleshy and have considerable water-storing capacity. A long, cool rest does no harm, and the leaves are not shed.

This plant is from warm temperate or subtropical latitudes, and it will not withstand severe frost, but it will survive a degree or two, and my plant, despite a sheltered position right back beneath the shelter of the terrace roof, has had its soil frozen solid once or twice, without taking any apparent harm. In some warm hillside or seaside gardens clivias will grow outdoors year round. Once flower buds-form in late winter or very early spring plenty of water is needed to make them swell, and a retentive soil is helpful. But sharp drainage — to permit surplus water to run away immediately — is also essential, for the fleshy roots are prone to rot. I make up a potting mix for my clivia by look and feel — something between a stiff fritillaria mix and an open orchid one. I shelter the pot from strong sunlight, too — according to collectors’ notes, Clivia miniata in the wild grows only in shade.