Nerine sarniensis and its varieties and hybrids
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:04:10 PDT)

Hi Jim,

I don't know whether you were a member of this list when I reported on the
IBSA symposium and my last trip to South Africa. In one of my posts I wrote
this:
"In one of the IBSA bulb chats Alan Horstmann wrote that the consensus of
the IBSA members at one of their meetings was that to get Nerine sarniensis
to bloom reliably it needs to have a totally dry dormancy. This goes
against what many of us have discovered. In fact as we have discussed on
this list watering in summer on a regular basis has meant that a lot of
people who weren't getting blooms now are. Hamish in his excellent topic of
the week introduction on Nerine spoke of needing to keep the perennial
roots from drying out.

We visited with Mary Stobie, an IBSA member from Greyton. She told us this
species grows high in her mountains where there are often mists in summer.
Plants are growing in the rocks and probably only get sun for a few hours
every day. They seem to be in very little soil, but she speculated the
mists and the rocks probably keep the roots cool and prevent the plants
from drying out. This would be quite different conditions than a bulb in a
plastic pot would get for those of us who live in warm dry climates. She
introduced me to a lady who had a large patch in her garden growing under
the shade of an oak tree with Veltheimia bracteata. This area gets regular
summer water, but no doubt the oak roots absorb a lot of it. Every year in
the fall she has quite a show. Her plants are reseeding and increasing so
every year it only gets better."

This is a plant with winter rainfall and dry summers. It is dormant in
summer. There are a number of evergreen Nerines and some that are in growth
in summer which no doubt would work much better in your climate Jim. That
is what Jim Shields has discovered. In my climate Nerine sarniensis hybrids
began to get diseased in winter when I left them out exposed to our
rainfall (50-60 inches between November and May, but heaviest December,
January, February.) So even though my plants are in growth during the rainy
season, they have looked a whole lot better since I moved them to my cool
greenhouse during our rainy season and kept the rain off their leaves.

Jim's post made me smile. Mark Twain is reported to have said that the
coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco. Where I live on
California's north coast it's rare for people to sit outside in the
evenings. You'd need to build a fire to keep warm which of course wouldn't
be wise as fire danger is great during our long summer drought. The day we
took the pictures of kites in July it really was cool. It's not unusual to
have foggy overcast days in our summers or wind which can feel cold close
to the ocean.

Temperatures sometimes heat up a bit in the fall as Merrill in his post
pointed out. But even then, most of the time it cools off in the evening. I
found when I moved my Nerine under the shade of my redwoods in summer that
it was too cool for them. Only a few bloomed in fall when they broke
dormancy. They are much happier in the greenhouse which can heat up in
summer during the daytime, but is cool in the evening. So perhaps what you
need to do Jim is to bring them in the refrigerator at night and leave them
out during the day in one of your shadier spots and be sure they are
watered enough that those roots don't dry out.

Mary Sue