Photo by George Klass
By Elizabeth Spence
Funny how things seem to dovetail, isn’t it?
A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a song written in 1598 by an English composer, John Wilbye, called “Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis” in which the lovely maiden, Amaryllis, is gently rejecting her lover, and all he can do is say “goodbye.”
A few days later, Jennifer told me that she had been asked by one of our readers for advice on looking after the amaryllis plant that is nowadays so much a part of our Christmas.
In fact, Michael Ashton of Ashtons’ Garden Centre in Tatamagouche tells us that the amaryllis is now more popular than poinsettia at Christmas.
Amaryllis is definitely in the air!
Let’s start by looking at where the name “Amaryllis” comes from.
It appears many, many times in the old Greek and Roman classical myths and indeed in literature, music and art up to the present day. It is the name given to the archetypal beautiful country maiden, often in the form of a nymph or shepherdess, who is involved in a love situation of one sort or another.
There’s one particular story about her that occurs again and again in various versions of the ancient texts, and is usually the one that’s thought to be behind the name of the flower.
Amaryllis was a gorgeous young shepherdess in love with an outstandingly handsome shepherd. All the other girls were in love with him as well.
The shepherd, who was more interested in plants and botany than girls, said that he would choose the one who brought him a flower he had never seen before, so Amaryllis went off to the Oracle at Delphi to find out how to go about this.
The priestess of the Oracle told Amaryllis to go to the shepherd’s cottage every day and pierce her heart with a golden arrow and until he noticed her. She did this for 29 days.
On the 30th day she saw beautiful, sparkling flowers growing where her blood had fallen. She picked one and presented it to him.
He immediately fell madly in love with the flower and then with her, and, on learning what she was called, he gave her name to the flower. Amaryllis. It means “sparkle.”
Her heart was healed and they lived happily ever after.
(Check out another instance of spilled blood turning into a plant in the story of Prometheus which appears in our article on Petrichor)
Here is a very recent painting called Amaryllis and the Golden Arrow by artist Fatima Ronquillo from the Philippines.
As a result of this story and many others, the amaryllis flower came to symbolize love, beauty, determination and strength.
This is all very well, but our Christmas amaryllis flower was totally unknown to the ancient world, so what’s going on here?
Well – we have to go to Sweden in the 18th century.
At that time a young man there called Carl Linnaeus wanted to marry a lovely young lady (her name was “Sara” not “Amaryllis”), but her father wouldn’t allow it unless Carl became a physician.
So, he headed off to the Netherlands where you could get a medical degree in a week. (He had actually written his thesis before he went, and it took him two weeks to get the degree. His thesis was called: Inaugural Thesis in Medicine, in Which a New Hypothesis on the Cause of Intermittent Fevers is Presented).
While in the Netherlands, Linnaeus met a very rich man who wanted someone to organize and name the hundreds of plants he had gathered from all over the world. Would Carl be interested? Of course!!
In fact, Linnaeus went on to develop the scientific method of naming and classifying plants that we still use today.
In one of his first groundbreaking works, the Species Plantarum of 1753, he grouped a number of plants under the name “Amaryllis.”
Being classically trained, Linnaeus chose the name “Amaryllis” because he associated these beautiful flowers with the beautiful, mythical Amaryllis. Quite arbitrary really.
Among the plants was a type of lily from South Africa which became associated with the parent of our Christmas flower. Breeding began in England in 1799, and over the years it has become so popular that there now up to 600 different types.
Here are a couple of the earliest drawings of an amaryllis – notice that the first ones were pink, not blood-red as some claim:
Linnaeus was attacked at the beginning of the 19th century for not having been precise enough in his grouping, and the struggle began to work out a proper classification of the different plants he had included under the term “amaryllis.”
Since then, and after the introduction of similar plants from South America and Mexico, the uproar in the plant-naming field about what an amaryllis actually is has been deafening and is still going on today. It is now in the amaryllis family, but is classed as “hippeastrum.”
But we know what we mean when we hear the word “amaryllis.” It’s our lovely Christmas flower.
Photo by George Klass
The Amaryllis bulbs we buy for Christmas come in various forms.
We can get them as bare bulbs and pot them up in a well-draining potting mix –ideally towards the end of October. In the wild they grow in stony ground, so they need good drainage.
Some growers place the roots in water to soak for a few hours before planting to give things a good start. Others don’t for fear of encouraging rot.
Make sure too that the pot is only slightly bigger than the bulb. Amaryllises do best when their roots are cramped.
Ensure that the bulb is not buried. Some recommend covering them as far up as the “equator” – i.e. the middle of the bulb so that only the upper half, or shoulder, is exposed. Some say bury only one third of the bulb, others say leave one-third showing. Here’s how our local amaryllis expert, Erica Lowe, does it:
The point is that you really don’t have to cover much of the bulb at all. By being exposed, the bulb is unlikely to succumb to rot which is the greatest danger.
After that you put in a stake if it is going to be very tall.
Water it once and not again until the leaves appear. Put in a bright spot and wait for the glory to appear, watering again only when the top of the soil is dry.
The second way to buy bulbs is in a kit:
Here, everything is provided and you just have to put it all together. Water in the usual way and place in a bright position. Easy-peasy.
Easier still is to buy them already started, with the leaves and buds in growth. That way, you don’t have to do anything except put them where you want them to spend Christmas and water them as the top of the soil gets dry.
Producers and marketers of Amaryllis bulbs are always looking for ways to save us time and effort at Christmas, and in the last couple of years a completely labour-free type of amaryllis has hit the stores: waxed bulbs.
The roots and base are cut off to provide a flat base so it stands up properly, and the bulb is covered in wax. You don’t even have to water these – they survive totally on their own with no intervention required at all.
And you can even get waxed ones with little sweaters on from Brecks:
Some commentators, however, absolutely HATE this waxing procedure. They claim it is the worst sort of plant cruelty. By removing the base and the roots you are condemning the plant to death. It will make a last ditch attempt to stay alive by flowering, but it is doomed. It can never be regrown.
John Wilbye’s song, “Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis,” mentioned at the start of this article, describes the beautiful maiden Amaryllis spurning her lover.
The ancient myth that this refers to tells us that Amaryllis is sitting in a cave, no longer interested in her gentleman friend, who this time is a goatherd. He is trying to lure her back to him using all sorts of wiles, but he realizes it’s not working and all he can do is say goodbye, “adieu.”
This is how we feel when our last amaryllis flower fades and dies, perhaps. In a way, we are spurned by the amaryllis plant as well. It won’t give us any more so we say goodbye to it and its beauty.
And then, we are likely to just throw the whole thing away. (Is that fate any worse than chopping off bits of the bulb before the waxing process and condemning it to death that way, I wonder?)
Yet, if we want to, we can keep our amaryllises going year after year. In the wild, they can live for up to 75 years.
Left to themselves, amaryllis bloom in the spring or summer. To have them flower at Christmas they have to be “forced.” This means inducing artificial dormancy and regrowth so they bloom when you want them to.
To do this after its first year of blooming, you cut off the spent flower stalk, but not the foliage. Keep in a bright spot so the leaves can use the light to feed the bulb ready for next year’s growth. Good old photosynthesis.
After the leaves have withered, cut the remnants off at the top of the bulb’s neck. Then just leave everything alone in the pot in a shaded spot.
Around two months before you want the plant to flower you break the dormancy, so that is in October if you want Christmas bloom.
Water well once and place the pot in a bright location. It should spring into growth and, when it is well established, you can water sparingly. With a bit of luck, it will get the message and be stunningly gorgeous at Christmas.
Photo by George Klass
Many of our readers prefer the “almost no work” approach and they don’t bother with all the “forcing” stuff.
Chris Thistle-English says:
When I lived in Manitoba (zone 3b), I planted one in my flowerbed the summer after it had bloomed at Christmas. I did this after the danger of frost. No immediate sign of life but ever hopeful.
And then it had several lovely blooms in mid- summer!
I took it in in the fall and potted it up. It bloomed again at Christmas and again the following summer outside.
Christine Innes says:
I have kept mine year after year. It also spends the summers outside in the pot, and it has even produced another bulb. Presently (early November) my amaryllis is resting and looking very healthy.
George Klass says:
I have an amaryllis that is over 20 years old. It blooms mostly every second year. I never cut it back and just remove the leaves when they fade. When not blooming I leave it in a room and water as required. I never take it out of its pot. Feed with miracle grow as required.
Erica Lowe, our local amaryllis expert, has an amazing collection. Her mantra is also – “let nature do the work!” She treats them as regular summer bulbs, and keeps them in pots all the time. They bloom in April and May in her dining room, covering every available space.
She was initially given an amaryllis as a gift, and that was it. The bug hit. She started collecting them, and collecting them and. . . .
Having spent her childhood in Bermuda, she has a natural affinity for huge, colourful, tropical booms anyway, she suggests.
This is how Erica keeps her bulbs going from year to year for indoor blooming in the spring:
Chop off the flower stalk after the bloom is spent.
I never cut the leaves off – just leave them to wither.
I put them outside in a sheltered spot on the east side of the house once the cold nights have finished. This way they are protected from wind and heavy rain.
Do nothing else. Let them fend for themselves, says Erica. Get out of the way of nature!
I bring them in again when the cold nights return and put them in my basement which is lightly heated.
I stop watering completely and ignore them from then on. They are going to be dormant for four to five months.
When the bulbs start to show growth in the spring, I amend the soil with worm castings and add fresh potting soil if necessary. I don’t use any other fertilizer at all.
Then the pots come out into my sunny dining room (we eat in another room- ahem), and I start to water again sparingly once a week. In due course, the blooms appear, including my favourite: “Apricot Chiffon.”
So, there we have it: lots of ways to treat your amaryllis.
Whatever you do with them, there is no doubt that they are some of the most spectacular flowers we can set our eyes on.
And we’re not limited to enjoying them only at Christmas. With hardly any effort they can be with us later in the year as well, offering that astonishing and breathtaking pleasure that only flowers can bestow.
Copyright © 2024 Elizabeth Spence