Good old scadoxus, right on time

Nobody seems to have told our Scadoxus plants about how global warming is stuffing up all the other garden plants' annual timetables. Here they are flowering again, last week of August, just like they did last year and the year before that ...

And what a welcome sight they are, too. Even though they're the stars of our garden, few friends manage to see them at this time of year. It's cold and wintry, and so we don't host many barbecues or lazy lunches outdoors, where our friends might see the amazing scadoxus show for the brief few weeks when it's on each year. 

Slowly but surely, the number of flowering plants is growing. This year we have seven, and judging by the willing growth of the baby scadoxus, in the long run we might end up with a dozen, maybe two dozen with their orange torches blazing with colour as the sunshine reaches their shady spot for a too-brief hour at the end of the day. 

Pammy and I are lucky to share this garden with our scadoxus. They ask very little of us in return, and yet give so much. Some relationships are like that.

My sole contribution is to help their family grow, by harvesting their seeds, propagating them, then planting them out once they have grown into healthy, bulbous babies. All of the babies planted in early winter are sending up healthy green leaves. They won't produce flowers for years, so for the next several seasons they will just grow, produce leaves, then grow some more. They're plants which are not in a hurry, and I like that.

They're also tenacious plants. When I unpotted the seedlings a few months ago, I almost didn't plant a few scrawny little tackers which looked like they were no more than slightly swollen streaks of a root-ling. I'm glad I planted even the most unimpressive babies, as they are all sending up leaves and promising that despite their slow start, they too will end up being a majestic spring flower one of these days.