Brunsvigia josephinae

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Here, several months have passed. The flowers that were fertilized have set the peculiar Amaryllid seed, and the whole inflorescence, at least in the wild, would have broken off and gone rolling across the veld to spread the seed far and wide. In this suburban California garden, I suspect the stalk succumbed to the gardener's shears. Which occasions an aside: it is wise to be careful when pruning the Amaryllids. It is becoming increasingly obvious that they are quite susceptible to viral infections after the fashion of orchids (after all, these plants are all petaloid monocots: ambitious grasses with showy flowers.) In many cases these infections do not seem to damage the flowers, but they can definitely ruin the leaves with unsightly blotching and discoloration. I have seen this quite often on commercially propagated Amaryllis belladona. This is the more important when you consider that the plant above is not a creature of few winters: it is likely that a flowering size bulb of this species is probably over 7 years old.

This photo was taken around November. The young leaves will expand as winter rainfall begins, and reach the dimensions of a small Agave attenuata, for which the bulb in winter could easily be mistaken at a distance.

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