8 plants in this collection
A rain lily that flowers on a whim of the weather, and a plant that spent nearly forty years under the wrong name. Zephyranthes macrosiphon is a bulbous perennial of the amaryllis family, native to eastern Mexico, grown for vivid rose-pink flowers that open as if overnight after warm-season rain.
A graceful native onion, Allium cernuum, the nodding onion, lifts loose clusters of pink to lavender, bell-shaped flowers that bend over in a soft arc at the top of slender stems, swaying through mid and late summer above tufts of grassy, blue-green foliage. The nodding habit gives the plant a particular charm, and the flowers draw native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators in good numbers.
Hardy begonia is the surprise of the shade border: a true begonia that survives a cold winter. Begonia grandis carries large, pointed, olive-green leaves lit with red veins and flushed deep rose-red beneath, and in late summer and fall hangs loose clusters of soft pink flowers on red-tinted stems, a cool, luminous note when most shade plants have finished.
Crinum americanum is the swamp lily of the southeastern coastal plain, a bulb throwing broad strap-shaped leaves two to three feet long in a loose arching rosette, with scapes of about the same height carrying two to six flowers in a terminal umbel. The flowers are the whole event: glistening white, six narrow tepals recurved into a star five or six inches across, the long filaments tipped with dark anthers and often flushed rose-pink toward the base. Fragrance arrives after dark, sweet and carrying, which tells you plainly what does the pollinating. Bloom comes in waves from late spring into autumn, and nearly year-round in frost-free gardens.
Crocosmia 'Lucifer' is a vigorous, corm-forming perennial and one of the best summer plants for the southern garden, multiplying steadily in good, moist, neutral to acid soil in sun or light shade. Tall, arching spikes of brilliant red-orange, flame-colored flowers rise over the clump through early to midsummer, held above fans of pleated, sword-like green leaves.
Few native bulbs command a wet margin the way Hymenocallis liriosme does. From a basal fountain of arching, strap-shaped, glossy green leaves rise leafless scapes, each crowned with several large white flowers whose narrow segments splay outward like pale spider legs around a central membranous cup. The fragrance arrives at dusk, sweet and carrying, a signal to the night-flying moths that pollinate the blooms in late spring and early summer.
Tulbaghia violacea, the plant gardeners know as society garlic, is a clump-forming perennial from the summer-dry grasslands of southern Africa, ranging from the Little Karoo through the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal. The genus honors Ryk Tulbagh, the eighteenth-century Dutch governor of the Cape of Good Hope, while the species name violacea simply means violet, for the color of the flowers. The common name is a small joke: the leaves carry a clear garlic scent, but a gentler, more sociable one than true garlic, said to be polite enough for company.
A native lily that answers the rain. Zephyranthes atamasco, the atamasco lily or rain lily, is a bulbous perennial of the amaryllis family, native to moist woods and meadows of the Southeastern United States. The name atamasco comes from the Powhatan people of the Virginia tidewater, an old word carried into botany, and the plant has also long been called Easter lily for the season of bloom.
