Quick Characteristics:
| Flower Colors: | red |
| Life form: | bulb |
Tigridia orthantha (syn. Rigidella orthantha) is a cloud forest plant from Guatemala and Mexico. It is found in higher altitudes in areas with cooler and moist pockets of air year round. Because of this distribution, it is difficult to grow this species where the temperature gets too warm during the day. It does very well in the San Francisco Bay Area where it can even be kept outdoors during the winter where it will go into a semi-dormant state with yellowing leaves and may not drop those leaves until spring arrives. Seedlings sown in June (summer) and allowed to remain moist in winter can bloom the following summer.
Photo 1 is from Rob Hamilton. Photo 2 was taken by Mary Sue Ittner in June 2007 of plants growing in the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens.
The photos below were taken by Nhu Nguyen. These plants came from wild-collected seeds and thus have very nice variation between each plant. Photo 1 shows a pot of seedlings about 6 months old. Photo 2 shows flowers from one clone, and photos 3-4 show flowers from another clone.
