Worsleya bloom

[Lee Poulsen]

The person selling Worsleya seeds on eBay from Brazil sells seeds from his own plants. I do not know where he got his original mother plants, but his seeds are good and have good germination. (He does keep finding unusual cultivars of it, like a white one and a dwarf one, as well as very unusual species of Griffinia. So I suspect there is some wild collecting for mother plants.)

The problem with Worsleya is that it is a little tricky to grow well without killing it, usually in the winter when the temperatures are cool but the potting medium is too moist. Also, it needs a very well draining medium. Many Worsleya growers grow it in volcanic rock/scoria or a type of coal cinder. It wants full sunlight and heat (in the summer), but also some humidity, and in order to flower it needs the summer night time temperature to drop below 70°F/20°C. For example, although the plant grows well in Florida, it never flowers there. I had a mature plant once here in inland southern California that grew well, but never flowered until I surrounded it with a simple, small, plastic sheet "greenhouse" that I kept humidified. There is a guy down in Orange County (just south of Los Angeles) who grew several from seeds and planted them outside next to his house and they are now flowering every year. He planted them in a bed full of pumice. He is much closer to the Pacific Ocean than I am, so his humidity is higher than it is here. And California (usually) always cools off at night during the summer dropping into the 60s (°F). 

They grow on the tops of giant granitic rock mountains (Serra dos Orgãos) near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where it rains all summer and are fully exposed to bright sunshine all the time and grow in cracks in the granite. It also drops down to 0°C or a degree or two lower a few nights during the winter.

As it turns out, the climate along the east coast of Australia seems perfect for their growth and flowering. A couple of decades ago there was a concerted effort to get seeds and bulbs of many clones spread throughout Australia (with some seeds coming from Brazil and many seeds coming from a guy in Pennsylvania who for several years brokered the sales of hundreds of seeds from a friend of his in Brazil--he was "only" charging US $2-3 per seed) to the point that now in Australia there are Worsleya bulbs being grown by quite a few people. They even have a Facebook group for it.

I've lost a mature bulb twice now, each time from too much moisture in the soil during winter.

And the flowers really are quite amazing to see in person. They have a luster that isn't quite as strong as in Nerine sarniensis

, but combined with that cool lavender-purple color, it can take your breath away. I once got to see a cluster of about 30 bulbs all in bloom one January in Brazil at the home of Mauro Peixoto who runs the Brazilplants website and has an amazing set of shade houses. There were 60 or so flowers in this clump that was just amazing to see. I couldn't stop taking pictures.

Anyway, it is not a simple-to-grow plant unless you live in Australia or the higher elevations of Eastern Brazil. (Or the mountains near Veracruz, Mexico.) Or you just happen to luck into growing it well in Pennsylvania or Orange County, California.