Friday, January 26, 2007

Two Halves of One Plant

A month or two ago, Mom and I each got an Amaryllis bulb. While they appeared to be separate bulbs, and were even sold in separate boxes with separate pots, we're beginning to suspect that they are, in fact, only one plant.

After planting, mine almost immediately sent a stalk shooting straight up into the air. It reached probably 20 inches in height, then opened up at the top into four equally spaced flowers radiating out from the top of the pole. One or two leaves remained at the bottom, barely poking their tips out from the bulb, not daring to go any farther.

Mom's Amaryllis just sat around for a couple weeks, then started working on the leaves. She now has several leaves almost two feet tall, and suspects it will basically just turn into an Amaryllis bush, sans flowers. Amaryllis disappointicus, we call it. She got the leaves and I got the flowers.

However, now that my plant is done flowering, the leaves are starting to grow. So maybe they just take turns, and Mom's leaves will die off in a bit, making way for some flowers. This page claims I can get mine to flower again, though I don't know if that would sabotage the poor little leaves trying to get their turn in the sun. We shall see.

1 comment:

Lacey said...

Well, I was looking forward to lovely pink-and-white blooms on the amaryllis I bought, and they turned out to be red-orange! I was lucky, though - mine had two stalks (of course, I peeked in all the boxes first for the biggest bulb). The taller one flowered first, and by the time it was done, the shorter one had grown about a foot and then flowered. Now both of those are gone and the leaves are going crazy, over two feet long and splayed out in all directions. I guess you never can tell with amarylli...