Amaryllis belladonna
Kathleen Sayce (Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:45:32 PDT)

You have given me much to mull over. Thanks for all the comments.
Meanwhile, I weeded and composted that bulb bed, which is in full
sun, and never gets summer water. In this climate, that means less
than an inch per month of rainfall, and no rain in some months; we
just had a few days of light rain after 30 days dry, and the lawns
are greening up again.

I think the bulbs survived, as evidenced by green leaves regrowing
after last winter's cold weather was past. As several PBS members
noted, they could be flowering later this year, which means I may yet
see flowers; though there are no shoots yet.

The prior formation of flowering shoots is interesting to consider;
I'm not willing to sacrifice bulbs to dissection to see if this is
what might be happening, but I will certainly be noting any increase/
decrease in flower stems re prior years after this. In the past two
years I saw an increase in the number of stems and flowers, so
thought the bulbs were increasing in size. Now it may be that they
had to sacrifice flowers to regrow leaves for a year.

My crinums mostly survived last winter too, though were cold-burned
down to the bulb surfaces, including upper necks. This summer, only
one flowered (one shoot, 4 flowers), and that one curiously was the
one clump I had transplanted the prior fall to a sunnier location.
All are thriving this summer in terms of leaf growth, so more flowers
may appear next summer. The smallest one died, gone without a trace
after the snow melted.

Kathleen