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You need to grow them hard! Full sun. They do however like to be well-watered.
European growers tend to think everything must be grown like N. bowdenii - a cool area grower that likes gentle summers.
Nerine falcata subsp krigei likes full sun in order to get the best foliage.

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on August 06, 2024, 09:26:06 AMWell, I definitely need to get better at marking, and/or tags that don't break or go MIA...in my garden!

Lachenalia? sp...?

Just spied this little guy this morning (not sure how I missed it thus far) that's been doing his thing in full sun in the 100°F+'s we've been having! Yesterday's high was 107°F...you GO little bulb!

I LOVE those spotted leaves.

That's a Ledebouria - as to a species - there's many with those leaves.
Check out pza.sanbi.org - do a search for Ledebouria - select the species that appear as recommendations - don't search "Ledebouria" otherwise every entry that has the word Ledebouria will load (100's)!

I forgot to add that Albuca viscosa is incredibly variable as regards foliage.
Within a three kilometre radius of my house I have:
1) Across the road in gravelly sand a tall form with 25-30cm tall olive green very conspicuously glandular succulent foliage.
2) About 130m above my house on an ancient wave-cut platform in seasonally wet fine-grained sand (with Wurmbea hiemalis) is a tiny form 5-7cm tall very fine dark green barely conspicuously glandular wiry foliage - coiled laterally i.e. not erect like a corkscrew but coiled up on itself. Some plants have wavy foliage and the two variants do not grow together - they occur as meta populations in the same habitat.
3) About three km's ESE of my house in the ecotone between recent (100's of 1000's of years old) marine sands and quartzitic sand derived from the bedrock sandstone of the Table Mountain Group there's an intermediate size form - 10-15cm tall dark green succulent foliage also tightly coiled laterally and also barely conspicuously glandular.
The tiny form is particularly attractive. I have only seen the large form in flower as I only discovered the other populations recently post-fire. I will update with pictures in due course.

All taxa with six fertile stamens and spreading tepals were previously included in Ornithogalum. Albuca has been amplified to include all taxa previously included in Ornithogalum that have a green median stripe on the tepals.
Albuca spiralis has six stamens but the outer three are sterile. Albuca viscosa has six stamens with the outer three smaller.
So six stamens = A. viscosa. Neither A. spiralis nor A. viscosa have erect flowers. I don't bother to even dissect the flowers - I just check the foliage - clasping below = spiralis.

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on June 27, 2024, 08:53:09 PM

Quote from: Robin Jangle on June 24, 2024, 12:08:49 AM

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on June 22, 2024, 03:42:41 PMWell, I wasn't expecting to be able to post a bulb flowering in the 101°F of late June. But here I am! Unfortunately I can't seem to locate the tag, and I'm not into disturbing the bulb while flowering or digging on my knees in 101°F for a tag 🏷�. To kill a gopher in my garden...for sure! But a 🏷� will have to wait. Maybe someone will recognize this (should be) South African species???

Forgot to mention...excited to see this bulbs very first flowering!!

It is a Crinum species - foliage resembles that of C. lugardiae but flowers will be needed to confirm.

Hi Robin, here are pics of the flowers...no scent really, and basically whitish. So I must have bought it for the foliage. I have at least a couple more Crinum that seem to be much slower than this guy. I've searched my records, but so far can't find where I purchased these, or what species they were purchased as. I tag most of my plants if they're not something I would know, but none of these I can find tags for.

Flowers are too tubular for C. lugardiae but are a very close fit for C. macowanii. I'm pretty confident that it is Crinum macowanii

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on June 22, 2024, 03:42:41 PMWell, I wasn't expecting to be able to post a bulb flowering in the 101°F of late June. But here I am! Unfortunately I can't seem to locate the tag, and I'm not into disturbing the bulb while flowering or digging on my knees in 101°F for a tag 🏷�. To kill a gopher in my garden...for sure! But a 🏷� will have to wait. Maybe someone will recognize this (should be) South African species???

Forgot to mention...excited to see this bulbs very first flowering!!

It is a Crinum species - foliage resembles that of C. lugardiae but flowers will be needed to confirm.

Here's some info from "The color encyclopedia of Cape Bulbs" by Manning, Goldblatt and Snijman.

As regards A. spiralis @CG100 is correct - just an unofficial cultivar name.

Thanks - the pic shows what I need to see!

It is the albino sport of Watsonia borbonica subspecies ardernei - the style is arched above the stamens and furthermore the anthers dehisce downwards ( in subsp. borbonica the anthers dehisce upwards)

It's a Watsonia. The general growth form is that of W. borbonica and it is possibly the albino sport of subspecies ardernei but without close up pics of anthers, tube etc a hybrid can't be discounted.

Unfortunately yes it is a synonym for Dietes iridioides. And the seeds look like those of a Dietes although not quite as angular as I'm used to seeing but definitely not that of Moraea villosa.
Who's the unscrupulous vendor?

@Robert_Parks please check the filaments - in dubia they are free, maculata is united for a bit (under a third) and what was known as maculata var fuscocitrina is united up to halfway - it is now known as arctotioides. Your plant looks like arctotioides!

@Uli your plant is definitely carneus - the form that was known as G. blandus

@Too Many Plants! I have not forgotten about your Ixia - my prints of all the various updates are all over the place so hopefully this weekend I can get them back and id your plant.

@Too Many Plants! it looks to be an Ixia. Could you please take some pics of the foliage and of the bracts. I should be able to narrow it down then .

@Too Many Plants! - that is also a hybrid. Obviously tricolor as one parent; the other is pillansii
The tepals are identical to pillansii - they are lanceolate and subacute whereas in tricolor the tepals are broadly lanceolate-ovate. Also the markings are a mish mash of the two species - tricolor has minimal black markings on the yellow cup whereas pillansii has very bold markings

@Too Many Plants! indeed 72 & 73 look more like Babiana regia than B. rubrocyanea. The leaves however are not as narrowly lanceolate as I recall those of regia being. However I have seen other records of regia from other localities that do approach rubrocyanea in width. I am confident however that they are B. regia.

A quick diagnostic test will settle the issue: most simply (no ruler or loupe needed) in regia the stigma is trifid and in rubrocyanea it is flattened and similar to that of a Petunia. To further confirm: in regia the tube is 10-12mm long whereas in rubrocyanea it is 15-20mm long. Also the filaments in regia are 8mm long whereas in rubrocyanea they are 10-13mm long. Also note that the filaments in mature rubrocyanea are curved whereas in regia they remain erect.

In 2000 myself and a friend were botanising a small recently burned patch next to the last known habitat of Protea odorata. We found what looked like B. rubrocyanea but the foliage and stigma were different. Back home I consulted literature and arrived at Babiana stricta var regia - apparently Presumed Extinct. I phoned John Manning and as luck would have it, Peter Goldblatt was at Compton Herbarium as they were working on Babiana! A field trip was arranged and they confirmed it was indeed "stricta var regia" - I recall John saying to Peter "We'll call this one regia". Whilst we were taking photos and preparing herbarium specimens Peter went botanising and Geissorhiza purpurascens - a species he had described from exhibits at the Darling Wildflower Show in 1981 but had never seen in the wild.

@Too Many Plants! The red and blue Babiana is B. rubrocyanea.

@petershaw The pic of the last Watsonia is W. aletrioides. This is the pure species - as mentioned in a post many moons ago almost all the pics on the wiki are hybrids. In W. aletrioides the tepals barely flare - as can be seen in your picture. The pictures under W. aletrioides are almost all hybrids with W. laccata