Not Your Grandmother's Amaryllis

Before we dive into the world of these stunning "new" amaryllis, let's talk for just a minute about names.  While I have used the word "amaryllis" in the title and again in the first sentence, it's because I'm writing for you, the gardening public, and not because it is necessarily accurate.  In fact, amaryllis has become the accepted common name for a group of bulbs technically called Hippeastrum.  These are the bulbs that we all know and love as the Christmas bloomers, often with giant red, pink, or white blooms (or multiple variations on that theme).  The truth is that Amaryllis (capital "A" and italicized) is the name of an entirely different genus (group) of plants and is not at all what it is sold in stores around the world at Christmas time.  That said, we all refer to these holiday beauties as "amaryllis", so in keeping with what we all understand, I'm using the same terminology.

The amaryllis I'd like to introduce you to are a newer group of bulbs with extremely unusual and exotic blooms with often spidery petals and an almost otherworldly appearance.  These unusual blooms come from a species known as Hippeastrum cybister, pictured below in a print made around the time of the species' discovery in South America.

In the past two decades, hybridizers have been working with Hippeastrum cybister and crossing it with other species and hybrids to create an entirely new group of bulbs known as the Cybister Group or Cybister Hybrids.  Some of the best include stunning new introductions such as:

Hippeastrum 'Evergreen':

Hippeastrum 'Rio Negro':

 Hippeastrum 'Merengue':

And one of the most unusual of all, Hippeastrum 'Double Merengue', a full double-flowered form of the variety pictured above.

So there you have it!  Some new, unusual and out-of-the-ordinary amaryllis to add to your Christmas collection.  You may not find these in every garden center you walk into, but they are becoming more widely available through various online retailers and a quick Google search should help you locate several nurseries and bulb suppliers who offer them for sale.  I hope this post finds everyone well and enjoying the holiday season and I wish you the very best in the coming year!

A Good Snail For Your Garden

Last week's trip to Raleigh, NC for the annual Garden Writer's symposium was successful on several fronts, but perhaps most successful in my being able to capture some great images of many unique and unusual garden plants which I'll be bringing to you here over the weeks and months to come.

The first of those has been a favorite plant of mine since I grew it as a child. Vigna caracalla, or snail vine, is a snail you'll definitely want to have in your garden! The name snail vine comes not from the fact that it's as slow as a snail (actually, just the opposite), but from the one-of-a-kind blossoms that curl and twist like the shell of a snail. It's certainly one of the most unique vines you can grow.

Snail vine can be easily grown from seed and is available from several sources which you can find with a quick Google search. It will grow fairly rapidly to make an 8-10 foot vine (maybe larger in warmer areas) and is perfectly suited to covering a small arbor, trellis or other structure. In warmer zones, it may be perennial (probably borderline in Zone 7b, more reliable Zone 8 and warmer). For those of you in colder areas, I've read that snail vine can be grown in large containers, cut back in the fall and overwintered in a cool, frost-free place to be returned to its outdoor location the following spring where it will resprout, grow and flower the following season. I have not tried this myself (I usually just start from seed each spring), but have talked with several gardeners who overwinter theirs this way with good success.

Flowering typically occurs in late summer and fall and the unique, curled blossoms are more than worth the wait. Full sun to very light shade will give the most flower production. Also, be careful about overfeeding, as you could sacrifice blooms at the expense of foliage.

This is just the tip of the iceberg where unique and unusual plants are concerned, so be sure to stay tuned in the coming weeks and months as I begin posting about many of the wonderful plants I saw on this trip, as well as several other recent plant-related adventures. I know there will be something new you'll want to add to your garden!

Wait Until You See.....

.....the new redbuds coming to market in the very near future. Some friends and I took a trip to Winchester on Friday and stopped to see Harold and Alex Neubauer (all I can say about their nursery is WOW!) before heading on over to see our good friend and horticulture guru, Don Shadow. Don took the time out of his busy day to treat us to lunch and then showed us to the far corners of the nursery where the best-of-the-best called to us from across the acres. One of the most beautiful was the plant pictured here--Cercis canadensis 'Rising Sun'--with golden yellow foliage providing the perfect foil for the coppery-orange new growth and all of it (old foliage and new) highlighted with brilliant, hot pink petioles! This is my kind of plant! Flowering in spring, its blossoms will be the typical redbud color.

Just as a tease, we also saw burgundy-leafed weeping redbuds, a mottled green-and-white variegated cultivar, a weeping variegated variety and perhaps my favorite of all (except for 'Rising Sun', of course) a hybrid between 'Forest Pansy' and 'Oklahoma' that had leaves that looked like deep, dark burgundy patent leather! Shiny and almost black! Yowza! Just wait til you see what's coming!

Thanks to Don for a fun day and to Harold and Alex for inviting us into the nursery on such short notice that morning. We appreciated it very much!

Rarity In Bloom

It's clivia season! I always wait with anticipation in mid- to late March to see whether or not the clivias are going to flower in April. I have two--the common orange variety, Clivia miniata and the much rarer yellow-flowering form 'Citrina'. Both are extremely special plants. The orange one is special because it came from my dear friend, Betty Brown. I helped her divide her enormous plants one year and she gave me a baby from one of them. Each spring when it flowers, it reminds me of Betty.

The yellow-flowered one, cultivar 'Citrina', is special because I was able to find a truly magnificent specimen of it--better than most of the others I've seen. 'Citrina' is actually a seed-grown strain, so there is considerable variation in the intensity of the yellow, the form of the flower and the size of the mature plant. I was lucky and found a really good one in flower a few years ago, so I was able to judge the quality of its blooms when I bought it. The plant is huge. Standing in it's 16-inch diameter clay pot, it reaches nearly 3 1/2 feet high with a 4-foot spread, the inflorescence stretches nicely up to the top of the foliage and the flowers are a clear, buttery yellow and borne in umbels 10" in diameter.

Really good yellow clivias are becoming more commonplace, but for years they were true collectors plants. One of the first yellow-flowering clivias ever sold in the U.S. was at the Longwood Gardens rare plant auction and fetched $10,000!!!!! I can assure you that mine was not even close in price, but it's a magnificent plant nonetheless.

Clivias are easy, tolerant houseplants that will withstand a fair amount of abuse. However, the kinder you are, the more spectacular the results. They make excellent subjects for areas of low light, though extremely low light throughout the year may cause them not to flower. Here's how I treat mine.

Clivia culture: They like to be potbound. My big plant is in a big pot (16" diameter), but for the size of the plant (3o" high x 4' wide) it's still tight. Once freezing weather has passed they spend the spring, summer and fall outdoors on the shady screened porch where they receive about 2 hours of direct morning sun and bright, but indirect light the rest of the day. I water and feed regularly during the growing season--a good soaking once or twice a week depending on temperature and wind (too dry is better than too wet), as well as a good liquid fertilizer (a bloom promoting formula) once a month.

The clivias stay out until mid- to late October. Temperatures down into the 40's are good for them and seem to help promote blooming the following spring. Once frost threatens, I move them indoors for the winter. Now, here is the most important piece of advice I'll give you regarding clivias: Once they have come in for the winter (late October, here) they DO NOT GET WATERED AGAIN UNTIL THE FOLLOWING SPRING WHEN THE FLOWER STALKS ARE NEARING THE TOP OF THE FOLIAGE AND THE INDIVIDUAL BUDS ARE EMERGING FROM THE PRIMARY BUD. And by "do not get watered again", I really do mean that I do not water them at all from the end of October until approximately the first or second week of April! Clivias are native to Africa and they have a very distinct dry, dormant period. If you water them during this time, they still may flower, but most of the time the flower stalk will not emerge from the foliage and all of your blooms will be way down in the leaves! Not pretty.

These short blooms stalks on clivia are an extremely common problem. I get questions about it all the time. The solution is the dry dormant period. They must have it. Clivia are closely related to amaryllis, only without the bulb. Instead, they store water in their massive, fleshy roots, so don't worry about hurting them. On a rare occasion, if I really notice the leaves curling or wilting during the winter, I may give them a tiny sip of water--not more than a cup or two on the biggest plants and less on the smaller ones--just enough to perk them back up a bit. Also, NO fertilizing during the dormant time. Just let them sleep and they'll reward you magnificently in the spring!

An Amaryllis By Any Other Name...

Hippeastrum cybister. Yes, yes, I know. More weird plants. Why not just talk about good old-fashioned red Christmas amaryllis? (Yawn.) Or everyone's favorite, 'Appleblossom'? (Yawn.) Or that beautiful red-and-white striped one that Granny grew every year? (Yaaawwn.) Alright, alright. I'm being unfair. I'm sounding like I don't like the traditional, large-flowered Christmas amaryllis when really, I do. But y'all know about those. I'd rather tell you about an amaryllis that you might not be quite as familiar with, if at all--and that's Hippeastrum cybister, or the cybister amaryllis.

This is a species that is native to South America--Bolivia, specifically--and has, in the past decade or so, been used extensively in hybridizing. The bottom photograph above is a picture of the species. It's extremely narrow petals are a dominant characteristic and carry through to the offspring. By hybridizing this species with other, more colorful species, the breeders have brought us an astounding array of exotic-looking, almost orchid-like amaryllis (the top picture) that 20 years ago were nearly unheard of.

The cybister group, as they're often referred to, are just as easy to grow as their larger counterparts, but are smaller in every respect. Smaller bulbs, smaller flowers, and generally smaller in stature (which means little to no staking!) and they make the perfect subjects for tabletop or windowsills during the holiday season. The cybister types also tend to be evergreen, so even though you'll purchase them as dormant bulbs (no foliage), once you get them up and growing they should remain beautiful green houseplants year round.

As with all amaryllis, they like to be potbound, so don't overdo it on the size of the pot. They also don't like to be overwatered, especially when in bloom (true for almost all amaryllis), so don't get heavy-handed with the watering can. Generally speaking, I pot them up, soak them good one time to settle them into the pot and leave them the heck alone until the flower stalks are emerging well from the bulb. Even then I just keep them barely moist. They're still rooting in at this point and overwatering could well cause those tender new roots to rot!

Cybisters will multiply with some degree of abandon and, after a few years, you should have a nice pot full of bulbs. Leave them alone! They're pretty this way. Even if the bulbs start "stacking up" on each other, they'll be okay. In the wild, amaryllis tend to grow on rock cliffs and other such places, so they don't need a gigantic pot filled to the brim with over-rich potting soil. All they need is a place to hang on and get a little food and water from occasionally.

I'd recommend summering them outdoors in a semi-shaded spot. In summer, when they are actively growing, you can feed and water them like your other houseplants, but once they come back in for the winter you need to back off again.

One last word on amaryllis: bloom time. This will likely come as a shock to some of you, but Christmas is NOT their natural bloom time. Spring is. The bulbs you buy for forcing at Christmas are exactly that. Forced. This doesn't harm them, but in later years (assuming you keep them from year to year) they will flower at their normal bloom time in March and April and, generally speaking, not at Christmas. A word to the wise--you're better off to just enjoy them at their natural bloom time. Re-forcing them to flower at Christmas every year is somewhat difficult unless you are able to provide just the right conditions. I don't recommend it. Buy a new one each year and add to your collection. Let it be beautiful for the holidays and enjoy the rest of them as they welcome spring. I mean, the flowers aren't any less beautiful in March, right?

Happy Gardening!

Rare Beauty

Once in a while you time it just right. You're in the right place, at the right time and you actually have the camera in hand! Such was the case the day I was at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in October of 2006. It just so happened that I was visiting on one of only a handful of days that their variegated ginkgo was in its full autumn glory. Those of you who are familiar with ginkgo know that the fall color is stunning, but fleeting. They color up seemingly over night, they show off for a few days to maybe a couple of weeks and then, as quickly as they showed their color, they drop every leaf on the ground. One day they're there and then next, gone. Poof! So I lucked out. I was in the right place at the right time and the accompanying image is the result. And people wonder why I find plants so fascinating.