about Brunsvigia grandiflora
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 01 Oct 2003 07:46:44 PDT)

Hi,

Many of us who grow Amaryllids seeds from the opposite hemisphere find we
can keep these growing on for the first year at least and later get them to
adjust to the proper dormancy. This has been my experience with all the
Brunsvigia seeds I have tried. You will need to protect them from the cold
however. What I find very strange is that one year I got seed of Brunsvigia
grandiflora from the Huntington Gardens. (Seed Michael Vassar donated to
the BX). It arrived in February and I had green leaves by March. I kept it
growing as long as I could and it has become a summer dormant Brunsvigia
for me. I tried to keep watering it this summer but it still went dormant.
I assumed Michael would have known the correct species but perhaps not.
Either it is really a winter growing Brunsvigia species and was
misidentified or I have reversed the only Brunsvigia species I have grown
from seed from my hemisphere!

This reminds me that the recent suggestion from Paul Tyerman to Doug
Westfall about adding pictures of Doug's Haemanthus leaves to the wiki is a
great idea. I'd like to see pictures of leaves of all the Amaryllid leaves.
You don't always find pictures of both leaves and flowers in the books
since they often don't both occur together. We saw a lot of Amaryllid
species in the wild in South Africa and I wanted to know what they were.
Looking at my field guides was often of little help since there weren't
pictures and not always descriptions either. So Rob Hamilton and Bill Dijk
if you are reading this how about adding some Brunsvigia leaves to the wiki?

Thanks.

Mary Sue