Nerine 2010

Wow, simply gorgeous!  I assume these are protected in a green house in winter?  Need to work on getting Jim Jones and Roy Herold over here, both of whom grow Nerine species.  I once got a pot full of N. filamentosa from Jim Jones, and resolutely killed it, but would like to try it again sometime, Jim always brings it to meetings when it is in flower.

I had no idea there was such color diversity.  Wonderful, unmuddied hues!

Very nice, Mattus! I only grow twice species of Nerine. N. bowdenii which is winterhardy here. When I think of it, I haven't seen flowers for a couple of years now; and one light pink, almost white, unnamed, from seed which i grow in a pot. The latter has just finished flowering.
Here's the very last flowers:

A couple more Nerine from last month, first, a summer growing species, Nerine falcata shown with our new Irish Terrier puppy, Lydia, for scale, (it has a massive flower), and second, a pot of the evergreen species, Nerine masoniorum, which has nearly 50 stems in bloom this autumn. This species has thin, grass-like foliage, and has produced copious amounts of seed. I had some difficulty getting this species to bloom, so I decided to pot it in a deep, long tom pot, since the roots seem to want to grow deeper than my other Nerine. Last year when I repotted it, I noticed how dense the roots were at the bottom of the pot, more so than with other Nerine species. So I decided to pot it in a container that provided a much deeper root run, nearly 18 inches worth. This year it bloomed profusely. Not sure if this was the reason, or if it was because I started using 0-0-6 plant food, or a result of both? Anyone else with similar results/challenges?

My one potgrown Nerine is in a rather small pot and seems to like it!
I didn't know there existed such small Nerines as you show in your last pics. Nice.

For some reason, Nerine masoniorum is reluctant to bloom for me.  I much prefer a very reliable strain of short-stemmed N. angustifolia/angulata/appendiculata that I call "Den's Dwarf."  It gets to be only about 6 inches/15 cm high.  If I bother to hand-pollinate, it sets seeds readily.  I do wonder just what species it is.

It sounds lovely Jim.  Have you grown the seeds on to see whether they show the same characteristics?  15cm is very short.  How big are the flowers?

And Matt, those pics at the beginning are amazing.  That purple one with the stripe is gorgeous!!  :o

jshields wrote:

For some reason, Nerine masoniorum is reluctant to bloom for me. 

For some reason all the Nerines I have ever tried have been reluctant to bloom, in fact they have very much favoured rotting :(

Nerine "Den's Dwarf" does come true from seed.  The leaves are grass-like and the flower is maybe 1 inch across the face -- they are not in bloom now so I can't be more precise.  Nerine seed are not very suitable for SeedEx distributions, but I'll try to remember to hand-pollinate the "Den's Dwarf" plants late next summer when they bloom again.

N. masoniorum grows quite well for me in my usual gritty bulb mix.  Both "Den's Dwarf" and masoniorum get the regular culture for summer-growing Nerine here:  They are left bone dry under a bench in a cool greenhouse over winter, then are outdoors in full sun and rain with occasional liquid feeding in summer.  Nerine angustifolia, fliamentosa, filifolia, gracilis, huttoniae, krigei, laticoma, platypetala, rehmannii, and probably one or two other species that have slipped my mind, get the same culture here.

Jim, My Nerine masoniorum remains cold and wet during the winter under a bench. It's very cold where they are, probably near freezing, since the greenhouse is maintained at 40 degrees F. I can share some seedlings with you if you wish ( of course, we are not certain of the species anyway!), but I too had difficulty blooming my plant until I repotted it two years ago and noticed that the fleshy roots seemed to want to run deep, so it is now in a 12" deep long-tom, the following year it bloomed, but I can't say that this had anything to do with it's decidedly massive bloom this past year.