From “A Bulb I Can’t Resist” in One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell:
“I never met a crinum I didn’t like, though I know these handsome bulbous creatures with tall stems crowned by lilylike flowers are not hardy much north of Washington. Still, many of them will stand occasional freezes to zero. Once in Memphis the temperature dropped to twelve below zero and I feared for the crinums, just sitting out there unprotected, without even a mulch or a nearby wall for shelter, but they bloomed as well as ever the following summer….
“Crinum leaves tend to be long and floppy. The white ‘Carolina Beauty’, a free-blooming small white with clusters of fragrant trumpets on eighteen-inch stems, good for cutting, has neat leaves that stand up, and they are narrow. But most other crinums can soon occupy a circle five feet in diameter. The leaves may flop flat on the ground. If they are near a path, the gardener will trip over them twenty times a summer, and if well back in a garden border, the leaves will lounge happily over any plant within hollering distance, and the gardener will wonder what ever happened to those phlox or irises or whatever it was that used to be there….
“I often saw the white flowers, somewhat drooping, the central rib stained deep madder, in fat clumps in old parts of southern towns, and the sight of them (they bloom off and on from May to October when they feel like it) used to reassure me that winter was a long way off.
“Most crinums are fragrant, though I do not much like the smell. It suggests thin sugar syrup to me, though I notice specialist growers of crinums keep insisting that it is the headiest perfume in the world. It is nothing like the tuberose or night jasmine or gardenia, so don’t count on it too much. Still, it gives the nose something to do.”
Hello!
To wrap up October, here we have photographs of another member of the Amaryllis family: Crinum, one of the Amaryllis varieties that’s often called “Swamp Lily” (because in the wild, it often grows at the edges of wetlands), but may also get tagged with the names River Lily, Milk Lily, Cape Lily, or Cemetery Lily. That “lily” is in all these common names is a hoot, since they’re not lilies (I guess we’re getting used to that, aren’t we?). Cemetery Lily is a nice fit — since that’s where I photographed them — and you probably can imagine these growing near the edges of a spooky swamp.
I was hoping “Ghost Lily” was one of the common names, since tomorrow is Halloween and I found this one that actually does look like a ghost…
… but, alas, even with that costume, I can only pretend.
Thanks for taking a look… and Happy Halloween!
