Nobody seems to have told our Scadoxus plants about how global warming is stuffing up all the other garden plants' annual timetables. Here they are flowering again, last week of August, just like they did last year and the year before that ...
Slowly but surely, the number of flowering plants is growing. This year we have seven, and judging by the willing growth of the baby scadoxus, in the long run we might end up with a dozen, maybe two dozen with their orange torches blazing with color as the sunshine reaches their shady spot for a too-brief hour at the end of the day.
My sole contribution is to help their family grow, by harvesting their seeds, propagating them, then planting them out once they have grown into healthy, bulbous babies. All of the babies planted in early winter are sending up healthy green leaves. They won't produce flowers for years, so for the next several seasons they will just grow, produce leaves, then grow some more. They're plants which are not in a hurry, and I like that.
They're also tenacious plants. When I unpotted the seedlings a few months ago, I almost didn't plant a few hopelessly scrawny little tackers which looked more like a slightly swollen streak of a root-ling than anything else. I'm glad I planted even the most unimpressive babies, as they are all sending up leaves and promising that despite their slow start, they too will end up being a majestic spring flower one of these days.