Wildflower series ~ Missed it!

I found a lone Crinum lily of some kind growing on the hill in November and I was keeping an eye on it because the flowers are large, pink and spectacular.

The rains came very late this year and at the end of November, everything was still very dry. It only started raining at the end of December and at that stage, I was too preoccupied with felling the large tree in my yard, as well as other cleanup duties to go up the hill and check on it. I finally got around to going up around the first weekend of January and to my surprise, it had developed a flower stalk and finished flowering already, all within about 3 weeks. By the 16 January, it was already making seeds.

I'll go and collect some seeds and sow them in my garden because that is the only one of its kind that I have found on the hill. These are important plants in traditional medicine and their numbers in the wild are reducing due to harvesting.

Like most lily species, these are also pretty toxic and although internal use is diminishing, they are used as an ingredient in lucky charms and protective spells for the house so the demand for these plants has not reduced.

These are considered easy to grow so I will sow the seeds directly into my garden and see what comes up.