Here in the frozen North, winter flowers means indoor flowers! Houseplants get us through the long cold season.
This is Bulbine favosa from Penrock Seeds, RSA
An attractive species with a caudex and thin wiry grasslike leaves. The bright yellow flowers are borne on a long spike.
Form B. A dwarf form with short dense tuffs of leaves and numerous flower spikes. Found in short grassland over sheet of exposed rock near the Loskop Dam in Mpumalanga
Funny, I first became interested in this genus of cousins to Aloe and Haworthia via a couple of small succulent species, and this species is small, but there is nothing succulent about it. I had seeds of one of those also, but no germination, alas..maybe I'll try some seed from Mesa....
This one was a pleasant surprise, the seeds of this South African native were only sown last winter, in fact January 14, 2010 (I just looked at the tag yesterday, had thought it was earlier than that!) and one of three plants in the pot is flowering already!
The buds only took a few weeks to develop. Interestingly, the flowers seem to open in the evening-maybe it would be afternoon in natural light, but they are under lights which are on until midnight, and they are open at least a few hours before that.
That means I had to take pictures with no sunlight, explaining the crappy quality of the photos: the flower stalk is higher than the bulbs, so I can't shoot it in situ, since I don't have good lights for photographing, and I'm lousy at flash photos!
For scale, the pot is 4 inches across, and the flowers are about 5mm-1/4inch.
First, a couple of really bad views of the whole plant/flower stalk, then a single flower low on the stalk, then a couple of the later flowers...
How to grow winter growing bulbs/succulents indoors: Winter growing plants are fairly simple to grow indoors, as long as you pay attention to the growing season: these are winter growers, mostly/dormant in summer (meaning little to no water), beginning to grow again when temperatures lower a bit in fall (not much of an issue here) or when days shorten, or in some cases simply when you start to water again in fall. The trickiest part of growing these as houseplants in the north is of course giving the plants enough light when they are growing in the season with the least light! Artificial light can help, of course, as can starting the plants growing in early fall when there is still good light. The plants can then do the main part of their growing before the days become too short and dark, and again from late winter into spring as the days lengthen.
How to grow winter growing bulbs/succulents indoors: Winter growing plants are fairly simple to grow indoors, as long as you pay attention to the growing season: these are winter growers, mostly/dormant in summer (meaning little to no water), beginning to grow again when temperatures lower a bit in fall (not much of an issue here) or when days shorten, or in some cases simply when you start to water again in fall. The trickiest part of growing these as houseplants in the north is of course giving the plants enough light when they are growing in the season with the least light! Artificial light can help, of course, as can starting the plants growing in early fall when there is still good light. The plants can then do the main part of their growing before the days become too short and dark, and again from late winter into spring as the days lengthen.
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