Hawmanthus Albiflos Rescue

[Mike Lowitz]

I Have some friends that had a landscape designer add haemanthus to their shade garden..,planted deep and amongst Azaelea and camellia they were not blooming and frankly in decline.  I shared with them we could easily correct, these are great bulbs for So.Cal.  In removing them to redo the beds I found they are very prolific. I was following roots for several feet with many offsets along the way. We found the original  invoice,  they had 3 beds with 7 bulbs per bed.   I removed 65 bulbs. Replanting now Iin 3 seperate areas around the house. 
Planting  the bulbs properly and in slightly raised fast draining mix has made all the difference. See below.


 

Mike
San Diego
Coastal

[OrchardB]

I find these almost indestructible as frost free greenhouse plants here in SE UK. (slugs allowing) Are their any more showy plants; maybe hybrids, that give more colour/flower size. I grow and flower H. sanguineus ok as pot plants but not tried crossing. Rarely see the other species available.

[Uli]

There are crosses between Haemanthus coccineus and albiflos. I was given a bulb but it is not yet of flowering size. The are pink flowered. So it is worthwhile trying to produce hybrids if you have red flowering species.
Uli 

[CG100]

A few species of amaryllid are produced on a commercial scale in either southern Africa or the far east and sold in Europe - they do come up on EPay and nursery websites specialising in plants, especially bulbs/corms/tubers, that are not run-of-the-mill, with mass appeal.
They are mostly slow or very slow-growing and/or very slow to offset, if they do so at all, so are never cheap, H. albiflos being the only exception as it is so common as a cast-iron houseplant and offsets reasonably freely - plants can be had via EPay for £2 or so.  Seeds are also ephemeral and generally put out a root PDQ - see Crinum for similar - also an amaryllid.

Rareplants UK offer various species from time to time, at eye-watering prices in the main.

It is interesting that you reliably flower H. sanguineus, is it is supposed to be an unreliable/erratic flowerer in cultivation (I do not grow it, but received wisdom from G Duncan in print).

There are a small number of different forms of H. albiflors - different leaf forms, more or less bristles on the leaves, and there are also a couple of variegated forms that command pretty horrible prices if you can find them.

For instance -

Haemanthus

[Emil]

I Have some friends that had a landscape designer add haemanthus to their shade garden..,planted deep and amongst Azaelea and camellia they were not blooming and frankly in decline.  I shared with them we could easily correct, these are great bulbs for So.Cal.  In removing them to redo the beds I found they are very prolific. I was following roots for several feet with many offsets along the way. We found the original  invoice,  they had 3 beds with 7 bulbs per bed.  I removed 65 bulbs. Replanting now Iin 3 seperate areas around the house. 
Planting  the bulbs properly and in slightly raised fast draining mix has made all the difference. See below.

I've never seen a designer use this en masse but I like the idea for dry shade! 

[Piotr]

I find these almost indestructible as frost free greenhouse plants here in SE UK. (slugs allowing) Are their any more showy plants; maybe hybrids, that give more colour/flower size. I grow and flower H. sanguineus ok as pot plants but not tried crossing. Rarely see the other species available.

Himalayan Gardens have Haemanthus humilis this year https://www.himalayangardens.com/haemanthus