Hippeastrum X johnsonii in New Orleans

Mark Wilcox marque219@yahoo.com
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 06:15:46 PDT
Thanks Cynthia and David for your responses.

I've put 3 pictures on the wiki to give everyone a look at what I found.

They're available for viewing via this page:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

The first picture is of bulbs growing in a bed along the edge of a house
in the neighborhood where I stayed.  Actually the bed was larger than is
visible in this picture, but I wanted the individual flowers to show a bit
of detail.  There is some white in the flowers, if not a lot.

The second picture shows you the all-red flowers, and was taken in a
garden bed at the house where I stayed.  There is no white in them at all.
 There were quite of a lot of these in evidence, and I think the bulbs I
was given are all of this type.  The only one to bloom so far looks
exactly like this.

The third picture is of the larger form with white stripes, which shade
into green.  A group of these was just a few feet away from the flowers in
the second picture.  This could be ackermanii, as pointed out by Cynthia. 
Yet, the markings seem both larger and coarser to me than those shown on
Plant Delights by the same name.

The intensely red tepals seem to be exactly the same shade in all cases. 
I'd have to say it's a hard color to photograph accurately, but is quite
impressive when viewed in person.  I was only there for a long weekend,
and there was intense cloud cover the whole time.  So, my light source was
on the gray side.

I have additional shots of similar flowers taken in the rather underfunded
New Orleans Botanical Gardens that were growing and blooming behind a
hedge where most folks wouldn't see them.  However, they could as easily
be foreign bulbs, Dutch hybrids, as anything else.  People who grew up in
the city remember large quantities of St. Joseph lilies blooming in City
Park, but they don't seem to be in evidence in 2005.

Perhaps the pictures will ring a bell with someone and more information
will emerge.

Mark in DC


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