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Garden journal entry |
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The blood lily's Houdini act |
June 07, 2025. Five years ago, I purchased a single bulb/plant of African blood lily and planted it in what was then the right fence border. It proceeded to bloom in its spectacular fashion shortly afterwards, and since then it's put in a performance every year. It has the distinction of being the last of my perennial plantings to show itself in spring, in most years waiting till mid-late May to display signs of life. But this year, May came and went and still no Scadoxus sighting, even though I had been looking closely at that general area as the month progressed. The year following its introduction to our garden, I undertook the project to make our rock garden zone, which connected the waterfall pond, the small rock garden, and the right fence border – and in doing so, I had planted a young whale's tongue agave not too far from the blood lily. Today, in another scan of that part of the garden, I suddenly noticed the lily in full bloom, its stalk bent at an unusual angle. Following the flower stalk down to the soil, I found that it disappeared underneath the agave. Turns out that the agave, no longer so young, has grown so much that one of its lower leaves blocked the lily's attempt to surface. Luckily, the lily was resourceful and found a way to display its glorious flower – and having done so, alerted me to its distress. To makes its life a little easier, I cut away enough of the agave leaf to uncover the bulb's point of emergence. That set free the flower stalk, but more importantly also the beginnings of the foliage that follows flowering and recharges the bulb for next year's floral spectacle. In time, I'll probably need to relocate the lily, but I think it will be OK for the remainder of this year. |
Last modified:
September 09, 2009
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