about Brunsvigia grandiflora

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
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


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