Surprise Bulbs

April 1, 2013 Surprise Bulbs

This time last year I was visiting a friend in Sydney. One morning I received a photo via text message from my guy at home with the accompanying text “look! a flower!” (or something along those lines – I’ll admit, I don’t remember the exact words). It was a strange red flower that was poking out of the earth, with no leaves.

I was intrigued. I asked him if he knew what it was, and he replied that he did not, it had just started growing at the edge of the yard.

“And there are no leaves?”

“It doesn’t seem so.”

Hmm. And then when I got home two weeks later the flowers had wilted and died off. But the crazy part was, there were green leaves coming up now, thick and waxy ones which reminded me of a tulip or an amaryllis. The leaves remained for autumn, winter, and most of spring, until it started getting really hot. Then it died back.

This year when we saw the shock of red coming up through the straw mulch (I created a garden bed around the area it bloomed last year) my curiosity could no longer handle it. Cue Google.

Ahhhh the power of Google. It seems I’ve got a Blood Lily (Haemanthus) growing happily in my yard, obviously put in by the previous owners, and managing to survive without any proper care while no one occupied the house. Apparently it’s originally a South African bulb.

This year’s blood lily. You can see that although there’s a few weeds around the base of it, it’s simply a stem shooting up out of the ground.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share my delight in the fact that despite us even knowing it was there, it came up to grace us with it’s presence in my garden. And it kicks all norms to the curb by flowering before producing leaves. Nature’s cool.

Tags: blood lily, bulbs, garden, haemanthus

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