Amaryllis belladonna and its wild varieties
jim lykos (Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:13:15 PDT)

Hi Mary Sue and Nhu,

One factor that I dont think has been considered in discussion about what
initiates flowering in Amaryllis belladonna, is the large variation in
flowering percentages from distinct wild cultivars of Amaryllis as against
good flowering percentages from Amaryllis cultivars that have been crossed
with other Amaryllis forms/varieties.
By wild varieites I mean the Amaryllis varieties that were oginially
collected and exported from South Africa during the 1820's to 1880's mainly
form the SW Cape.

Most of my Amaryllis cultivars have about an 80% flowering rate - where
every mature sized bulb flowers each year, with exceptions for bulbs that
had a heavy seed load through controlled crosses the previous flowering
season. Conversely there are a few cultivars of what I regard are the pure
belladonna varietial forms of Amaryllis where regardless of how they are
cultured flowering is only initiated 10% to 30% of the time.

The poorest flowering variety has very light pink trumpet shaped flowers
and - has between 5 to 9 flowers that all face the direction of the midday
sun. It is a very poor seed setter, and the seeds are always relatively
small and round. These are found through the farmlands of south east of
Australia particularly in 19th Century cemeteries where they have often
naturalized. I understand that there are a few distinct colour forms in
South Africa that are regionally based, and are uniformly coloured darker
pinks and are more robust in flower. There is a more even pink and a
purplish pink Amaryllis belladonna also found in country side regions in SE
Australia that have the look of being different wild forms of the species.

Has anyone seen these flowering in South Africa as uniform flower colours,
or grows them - what difference do they display?

Cheers

Jim Lykos
Blue Mountains Australia

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nhu Nguyen" <xerantheum@gmail.com>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 1:32 AM
Subject: Re: [pbs] Amaryllis belladonna and fire