Griffinia hyacinthina

Lee Poulsen via pbs pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Sat, 11 Jul 2020 15:01:18 PDT
Dylan is the only person I know who has offered any for sale. I’ve given up trying because the bids get way way too expensive. Dylan seems to have an ideal location in a large greenhouse in which they grow and bloom every year. I got one once long ago from Kevin Preuss back when he was selling all kinds of Griffinia. It grew very nicely the first year, went dormant the next winter and never sprouted the next year. Every year for 3 years I would keep checking to see if it was still in the pot and it was, and it was the same size as always. The 4th year when I checked, it had rotted away at some point. I kept it with all my other Griffinia which grow well, flower, and form offsets, and otherwise seem to like the conditions I have them in.

When I first visited Mauro Peixoto’s shade houses in Brazil, and he was showing me all his Hippeastrum and Griffinia species, I asked him if he grew G. hyacinthina. He said yes and took me over to another part of the shade houses and point to a raised bed in the ground. There were dozens of giant bulbs about 2/3 buried but dormant. He said he had great difficulty getting them to sprout. They mostly just sat there dormant. And he hadn’t gotten any of them to flower after the first year he had them when they did. Now his climate is great and all kinds of things grow well on his property. He has a number of large healthy clumps of Worsleya that bloom en masse every year (although getting seeds to mature is much more iffy). All his other Griffinia do well, including the white ones. One day I drove along the coastal highway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (which is supposed to be one of the areas it’s native to), and stopped at a couple of nurseries I happened upon along the way and asked (or actually pointed at pictures on my phone of it) if they sold them or even knew about them. Neither place knew about them.

What was really cool was visiting Harri Lorenzi’s Jardim Botânico Plantarum one weekend with Mauro and a co-worker of mine (we were in Brazil on a business trip), and they showed us a bunch of new Griffinia species they’d collected on recent trips. There was this one amazing huge Griffinia in bloom that was either a larger subspecies of G. hyacinthina, or possibly a new species, that gave me a severe case of plantlust. I haven’t heard if they ever identified it. I’ll see if I can attach an old picture of it.

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 8:22 AM, Nicholas plummer via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
> 
> FYI, Dylan's Bulbs is currently offering a near-blooming size G. hyacintha
> on eBay.  Starting bid is $450.00, and bidding closes on Sunday.
> 
> Nick



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