[ Lost in the Landscape ]

two plants talking

Here’s a pic­ture from the week­end of a cou­ple of plants inter­act­ing aes­thet­i­cally, a dark rose clone of naked lady, Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna, with Mex­i­can feath­er­grass, Nas­sella tenuis­sima (bet­ter known as Stipa tenuis­sima). I par­tic­u­larly liked the lines on the petals of the lilies echo­ing the wispy lines described by the stems of grass…

Dark amaryl­lis

August 21 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Amaryllis belladonna • Mexican feather grass • Mexican feathergrass • naked ladies • Nassella tenuissima • plant combinations • Stipa tenuissima | No Comments »

naked ladies and tarts

Plum tart

Early last week, while I was work­ing, John had a chance to go up to North­ridge and visit his aunt for a few days. As part of the long week­end he was able to go to the aunt’s sister’s house and raid her plum tree. “You couldn’t tell I touched it,” John said, refer­ring to the num­ber of fruits the tree still had on it. He came home with maybe five or six pounds of them.

When you have a small crop of any­thing you savor every sin­gle fruit. But with this many I could splurge, and break­fast Sun­day included a plum tart. Pho­tograph­ing some­thing purple-black against a white back­ground turned out to be a lit­tle too much con­trast to make the pic­ture look that appe­tiz­ing. But hot out of the oven it wasn’t bad. (I must admit, though, that John might be get­ting tired of this blog­ging thing, with me going, “Wait a minute. We need a pic­ture before we eat it…” I can just see the next tell-all book to hit it big: I mar­ried a blog­ger…)

Lycoris squamingera on bare stem

Out­side, things were bloom­ing. The first of the month brought this big burst of Lycoris squamigera Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna, which along with a pas­sel of other com­mon names is called naked ladies. The plant grows actively in the fall through spring, putting out long strap-shaped leaves, but no flow­ers. The flow­ers come now, in mid­sum­mer, after the plant has gone dor­mant and dropped all its leaves. The lone flower stem comes up from the bare earth, com­pletely unadorned by leaves–hence the com­mon name. Another of its com­mon names is “sur­prise lily,” which also makes a lot of sense–Imagine see­ing this after writ­ing the plant off as a goner. Edit: “Sur­prise lily” refers more to lycoris, which I’ve decided this plant isn’t after all, after a cou­ple discussions.

Because it grows in the win­ter, when it’s wet, and is basi­cally dor­mant in the long rain­less sum­mer, it gets by with min­i­mal sup­ple­men­tal water­ing, mak­ing it a per­fect bulb for Mediter­ranean cli­mates like South­ern California.

Other species in the genus Lycoris are some­times called naked ladies as well, but the plant around here that is most com­monly referred to by that name is the rounder, taller, more buxom Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna.

The rental house next door which often gets zero yard care has a patch by their front door. I couldn’t fig­ure out what I was doing wrong with mine. Why were mine shorter? And why did mine bloom for a some­what shorter (but more intense) period? Then I put the pieces together…totally dif­fer­ent species. I sup­pose there’s some­thing of that grass always being greener thing going on here.

Now that I’ve fig­ured it out I like mine just fine. In fact I think these, my kids, are much more won­der­ful than any­one else’s… See the species cor­rec­tion above. I’ve decided this is Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna after all!

Lycoris squamingera closeup

August 05 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: food • in bloom • Lycoris squamingera • naked ladies • plums | 2 Comments »