Doryanthes
Mary Sue Ittner (Sat, 11 Sep 2004 07:37:53 PDT)

Hi,

New list member Peter Thomson from Sydney, Australia, sent me pictures of
Doryanthes excelsa to share with everyone and I just late last night found
time to add them to the wiki and make a page which I will move into place
alphabetically when I find more time. Does anyone know what the up to date
family is for this genus? My Australian books say Agavaceae and it
certainly has that appearance to me, but since appearance is no longer
always what we go by... Other choices I've seen on the Internet that make
less sense to me are Liliaceae and Amaryllidaceae. The common name for this
plant is Gymea Lily, but one of my books also calls it Gigantic Lily which
seems appropriate. We saw Doryanthes palmeri in Australia and it too was
very impressive. I'd think you'd need to have a large garden for these
plants. The Encyclopedia of Australian plants suitable for cultivation
says they are highly suited as container plants, but the containers need to
be large. I wonder how large that might be. Any Australian members growing
either of the species in your gardens?

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue