Haemanthus King Albert
To brighten these long damp days, here are a few things which flowered in the last month, but didn't make a show for one reason or another.

Colchicum cilicium
The colchicums were good this year, but most were past their best by the Kent Show. Here is C. cilicium, and some others, a week earlier.

Nerine humilis ex Piekenierskloof

A nice, short form of Nerine humilis.

Strumaria truncata ssp rubella

Colchicum baytopiorum
By contrast with the earlier colchicums, this, my favourite, has only been out for the last week or so.

Strumaria tenella ssp tenella
I badly wanted to take this to a show, but the dull weather meant that the buds were very slow to open, and it has only reached its peak this weekend. These are about 5 inches high, and were grown from seed sown in Autumn 2008.

Nerine humilis

A couple of plants from November.  First a nice, large form of Nerine humilis I got from Chris and Lorraine Birchall (Tale Vallery Nursery).

Ipheion sessile

My pan of Ipheion sessile has been wonderful for the last week or so.

The Haemanthus are South African.  I do take them to shows if the flowers are in good condition, but that is difficult to arrange when we only have 3 shows over a period of two weeks.  The judges aren't normally too impressed, but there are always some visitors who are excited by them.  Some of them make very large leaves after flower - they are appearing now - and I don't think they are hugely hardy, though possibly on a par with most Mediterranean bulbs.

You can grow them from seed from South Africa - I have several pots of seedlings - but it is a long wait before they get to flowering size.  The mature bulbs seem to make offsets slowly, which is how I got these big ones.  Kurt Vickery sometimes has some.

One of the reasons for growing them is that although they are not as showy as some of the big amaryllids like Brunsvigia, they are a lot easier to flower in the UK climate, and once they get to flowering size they seem to perform year after year.