Monday, March 7, 2011

Amaryllis


 (you can click on the photos to enlarge)

This is a picture of the throat of my stunning, velvety, fire-red Amaryllis taken in the evening sun. Isn't this color just a killer? The photo is not color-enhanced or manipulated in any other way. Of course, it didn't start out like this, as a matter of fact, it took a couple of weeks for the bulb to flower. You can see pictures of the unspectacular start of this bulb on an older post about forcing bulbs on my blog if you click here.



I was right in my initial guess that the bulb was producing two flower stalks. Besides watering the only thing that I had to do, was to wait patiently for them to grow and open their blooms.  


  

Here you can see that the flowers clearly show their red color already. 


A little later a close-up shot reveals that the individual blooms carried by this stalk are well formed and almost ready to open. 


  

A couple of days forward it looked like this.
  

  

Again, a few more days later, tadaaa... almost all blooms of the two stalks have opened. What a stunning sight, don't you think?



Close-up of the lower bloom cluster. The saturated red is really special. For sure not a plant to be overlooked!



At the same day when I took the two pictures above showing the fully opened flowers I got lucky and the evening sun was shining on the Amaryllis plant. It intensified the red color even more.



At the very last one more close-up of the upper bloom cluster of the Amaryllis also taken in the evening sun light. It was a lot of fun and super-easy to grow the Amaryllis bulb. Next year I would like to do it, again, but maybe I try a different color. I know that they are also available in white, which is my favorite color. I would love to hear about what are your experiences with forcing Amaryllis bulbs indoors.

See you in the garden!

Christina



9 comments:

  1. Your Amaryllis is gorgeous. There is a fantastic article on pollinating your bulbs to produce seeds. See here. http://www.amaryllisbulbs.org/2007/11/how-to-pollinate-amaryllis-bulbs.html

    I am growing a Red and a White Amaryllis right now. It hasn't flowered yet.
    I bought mine from White Flower Farm right after Christmas holiday, when they have it on sale for a great price. Right now they sell the bulbs full price, but they have gorgeous varieties. http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/search.html?keywords=amaryllis&name.x=0&name.y=0&name=Go

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  2. meemsnyc, thanks for your comment! I will have a look at the article about bulb pollination (sounds really interesting) and visit the White Flower Farm website. Maybe I find my next Amaryllis bulb there :-). Many thanks for posting the two links.
    Christina

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  3. Beautiful! You have inspired me to try this next year. Your top photo is stunning.

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  4. Beautiful, Christina. Red on Blue and white. Gorgeous.

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  5. HolleyGarden thanks for leaving such a nice comment on my blog. Great that you want to try to force Amaryllis next year, too! I already can hardly wait to do it again!

    Sherry, thanks for stopping by! I haven't realized it consciously (guess I was too focused on the Amaryllis), but your are right there is a red, blue and white color scheme going on here! I am glad that you like it!

    Christina

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  6. I just bought some on sale on White Flower Farm's website. I wrote about it here. http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/2011/03/chatting-about-gardening.html

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  7. Have never forced any bulbs..you can also get them in pink and red and white striped. Ours are in the garden. You have a pretty one here. I love the table in the first photo!

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  8. Your amaryllis is beautiful, especially against the blue and white china. Are you going to keep the bulb for next year?

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  9. meemsnyc, good luck with your new Amaryllis bulbs!

    Darla, I am glad that you like my Amaryllis. The "table" in the first photo is actually a small vintage desk. It is one of my favorite furniture pieces that we have in the house.

    Masha, it is always a pleasure to see you stopping by! It makes me happy that you like the Amaryllis including the blue and white "background". I just offered the bulb to a friend to plant out into her garden. The red of the Amaryllis is a little bit too bold to go well with the more muted other colors that I have in my garden, even though it was great to have this "bang effect" in the house for a while :-).
    Christina

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