Greetings, Although smaller bulbs can certainly back densely in their natural settings (especially following fires - I'm thinking Calochortus here in California), I tend to think Amaryllis belladonna achieves its massively dense stands because of its nonnative status. In South Africa, the bulb must content with pathogens and and hebrivores that are largely absent here (Amaryllis worm being perhaps the most conspicuous - though perhaps not as important as native soil fungi). I would guess these natural competitors keep the bulbs from creating landscape-scale monotypic stands as they can do here... -|<ipp > Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 07:47:00 -0700 > To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > From: msittner@mcn.org > Subject: [pbs] Amaryllis belladonna flowering > > Hi, > > I've continued to have bulbs with flower spikes in my garden earlier > than usual and more than usual so my experience has been different > than Andrew's in southern California. But severe drought for us is > still much more rain than severe drought for him. I probably didn't > need to add any more photos of Amaryllis belladonna to the wiki as it > was already well represented. But I have added photos my husband has > recently taken of some of the displays in our town and seen on our > hikes as they are widely planted. I wonder if you see these kind of > displays in South Africa. Someone has planted a hillside below my > husband's office. They get no supplemental water other than rainfall, > but are very exposed. This year they were really amazing. (Third row > of photos in the link below are the new ones.) > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… > > Mary Sue > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/