[pbs] Amaryllis belladonna.
Hans-Werner Hammen
haweha at hotmail.com
Mon Sep 4 20:34:49 EDT 2006
Greetings from Duesseldorf, Germany
In the globular grenhouse of the botanical garden these belladonna lilies
are blooming so splendidly - as every season - (since some years) and they
are slowly but steadily multiplying.
Amaryllis belladonna grows best when planted in the ground, and left
undisturbed. Well it is an amaryllid I like to assign as "desert amaryllis"
thus indicating that it can tolerate rather extreme weather conditions. As
regards to "extreme" there seems to exist ONLY one more or less relevant
condition in order to induce the final scape elongation within the bulb,
that is namely a certain minimum temperature during the summer "reposal" in
the magnitude of 30°C - but I even doubt that. William the Bulb Baron has
already found out that total dryness not to be crucial for a successfull
scape "preparation"of the bulb. As regards the speculation about winter
coldness I like to add now that these wonderfull Naked Ladies I mentioned
above are growing at a minimum winter temperature of above 55°F
(13°Celsius):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/haweha/2830.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/haweha/2827.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/haweha/2828.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/haweha/2823.jpg
My understanding of this great amaryllid is that it is accustomed to
tolerate extreme conditions, might these comprise of coldness, heat or
extreme drought (provided the root systemn remains grossly complete) But
that does not mean that applying these are the stone of wisdom in order to
induce the formation of blooms.
Tropical Amaryllids are in general versatile, and they reward a good
husbandry, that includes maintaining them at moderate temperatures. And a
container volumen which is not too spare. Particularly Amaryllis belladonna
will not perform so very well at all in pot confinement ;-) It is a rather
tiny plant; I possess ome bulb from Madeira (250 grams) and as far as I kow
400 g will seldom be exceeded. This leads to the temptation to prison them
into containers which are too small for them and make them suffer. Usually a
mother bulb willl waste its energy while diligently dividing there,
delivering numerous deplorably small offsets.
Hans-Werner
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