New Member
Lee Poulsen (Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:14:12 PDT)

Welcome Jonathon,

And thank you for tantalizing us with the knowledge that you have
Scadoxus cyrtanthiflorus. I am sure people like Doug Westfall are
drooling over this fact. I have only seen photos of it and it looks
magnificent, but have heard that it is exceedingly hard to come by
unless you can somehow make your way to the forests of Uganda. (Which
I'm not sure is any easier of a method to obtain it...) I have also seen
photos of S. cinnabarinus which look gorgeous. I was surprised to see a
partial photo of the flower of this in the latest issue of National
Geographic in an article on Bioko Island immediately off the west coast
of central Africa: "Bioko Island is a little known island off the west
coast of Africa. It's part of Equatorial Guinea and the site of Malabo,
the country's capital, but it's also a center of unparalleled
biodiversity".
<http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/…>

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a

jonathanhutchinson@rhs.org.uk wrote:

I hold National Collections of Scadoxus, Veltheimia and Urginea through the NCCPG, National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens.
The Scadoxus have had a good year with some lovely flower heads but I still await the flower spike on Scadoxus cyrtanthiflorus. From its horizontal rhizome it sheds its old foliage and pushes out a new pseudostem of leaves from the base each time getting thicker and growing taller, I am sure this year will be the year but I said that last year as well!

Best wishes to all

Jonathan Hutchinson