Amaryllis

Family: Amaryllidaceae (Amaryllis family)
Genus: Hippeastrum

When is an Amaryllis not really an Amaryllis? When it’s a Hippeastrum, of course. That’s the true botanical name of the flower-in-a-box that many of us receive—or give—as gifts for holiday blooms in December. The Hippeastrum genus is native to South America, and the genus Amaryllis hails from South Africa. They are different plants, but with similar attributes. Both are members of the huge Amaryllidaceae family that also includes daffodils and snowdrops.

The Hippeastrum bulb you’re planting about now has traveled a few miles on its way to your windowsill. Its ancestors grew in the Andes, but your complex, large flowered hybrid probably started life in Holland or Israel or South Africa. Its very existence is a tribute to plant breeding and hybridizing to suit human purposes. That bulb in your hands—probably 8 inches or so in circumference—has been carefully nurtured by growers for at least two years, under precisely controlled conditions, so it can easily be forced by you to produce up to six flower stalks in five to eight weeks. Left to its own devices, it would prefer to bloom in February.

All you have to do is follow the instructions that came with your bulb. Plant it as soon as possible if it didn’t arrive pre-planted. Use a pot not too much larger than the bulb, and please make sure it has a hole in the bottom for drainage. A reliable rule of thumb is to leave a span of two inches between the outer edge of the bulb and the pot’s rim. If there was no accompanying soil, just use a fast-draining commercial potting mix, preferably one without a heavy concentration of peat moss, and make sure the soil is damp before you start. Set the bulb so that the top third of it protrudes above the soil line and water it in to settle it. If you want to set a stake, now is the time to do that. Put the pot in a well-lighted, draft-free place and keep the soil moist but not soggy. When the flower stalks emerge, give the pot a quarter-turn every day to keep things growing straight. That’s all there is to it. If you want something even less complicated, you can grow the bulb in a glass vase with only pebbles and water. Just make sure the water level never reaches higher than the very base of the bulb, to submerge the roots but nothing else.

After the blooms have faded, you can rebuild the bulb, if you choose, and try for a repeat performance next year. Hippeastrum is naturally very long-lived. It can bloom for as many as 75 years, although modern hybrids will generally have a much shorter life and the quality of the blooms may decline. Bear in mind that after it’s bloomed, your bulb is exhausted. If you’ve grown it in water, it’s probably beyond recall. But if you used soil, you can cut the flower stalks off about three inches above the bulb, leaving all foliage intact. Place the pot in a sunny location and water it when the top inch of potting soil is dry to the touch. Give it a monthly meal of water soluble, balanced fertilizer. When all danger of frost has passed, move it outside to a sunny location and keep up the same regimen. In the fall, after the first light frost has blackened the leaves, bring it inside. Cut off the foliage and store the bulb in a cool, dark place—but not the refrigerator—for ten weeks, keeping it almost completely dry. If the fates are smiling, you’ll see new growth, at which point you should repot it, water it, and move it to a sunny window. The entire process starts again.

In the southeast part of our country, Hippeastrum performs reliably outdoors, forming enormous clumps that are a wonder to behold. Not much chance of that happening here, although the earliest hybrid, Hippeastrum x johnsonii, dating from 1799, has been reported to be hardy to USDA Zone 5. Long available only from hobbyists, it is now offered by some specialty nurseries and sells out quickly. So perhaps within the next decade I’ll have to eat my words—although I won’t be eating any Hippeastrum because they’re quite poisonous—and refer you to an in-ground clump in Whatcom County. I doubt it. But gardeners are a hopeful, determined lot. If one of you tackles this challenge, please let me know how it turns out.

Hippeastrum can be propagated by seed, cuttings, and division. For most of us, however, the favored form of propagation is “mail-order catalog.” That’s a far remove from its discovery in Chile in 1828 by a physician from Leipzig on a plant-hunting expedition. When he came across the startlingly beautiful flowers, his only companion was his faithful dog. Dr.Poeppig was reputedly seized with such delight that he uttered “loud shouts of joy,” to which his dog responded with equally enthusiastic yelps and yowls. If you have a similar urge to give voice to your joy when your Hippeastrum blooms this December—even if you call it an Amaryllis—at least now you’ll know that another plant pioneer felt exactly the same way.