2012-04-26

lblanchard: (Default)
2012-04-26 06:10 pm
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In other plant news....

If I'm going to grow Hippeastrums, I might as well grow really interesting ones. So...


With the refund I got from cancelling my Philadelphia Inquirer subscription, I sent off an order to a rare hippeastrum dealer for four seed-grown species bulbs -- two more 'papilio' and two 'mandonii.' Check out this latter, from Flickr:


Hippeastrum mandonii


The bulbs are described as 'immature,' so I'm expecting to have to wait a few years for them to bloom. No matter: If my other 'papilios' bloom in the interim, I can amuse myself by trying to cross them with the 'papilio' I have here. Then, assuming I can get 'mandonii' and 'papilio' to bloom at something close to the same time, I might could get interesting crosses such as this one:

Hippeastrum papilio x Hippeastrum mandonii


That's assuming I live that long. Let's see: three to five years for mandonii to mature, three to five years for the pups to get around to blooming. Yeah, it could happen in my lifetime, I guess.