Clivia miniata

Amaryllidaceae - Clivia miniata Madame Le Grelle d’Hanis
Revue de l’horticulture belge et étrangère , Frédéric Burvenich, Édouard Pynaert, Émile Rodigas, August van Geert & Hubret J. van Hulle (editors).Gand [Gent], Bureaux de la Revue, 1881, volume 7, plate 1. Chromolithograph



Imantophyllum miniatum (Lindl.) Hook., Bot. Mag. 80: t. 4783 (1854).

IMANTOPHYLLUM ? MINIATUM

VALLOTA MINIATA ? Lindl. in Gardener's Chron. 1854, p. 119; and at p. 149, observations by Mr. Backhouse.

A flowering specimen of this fine Amaryllidaceous plant was exhibited at a meeting of the Horticultural Society in February of the present year ; and in the following month the Messrs. Backhouse, of the York Nursery, who imported the plant from Natal, obligingly forwarded from their greenhouse the specimen here represented. Dr. Lindley noticed the plant doubtfully as a Vallota : it wants the peculiar duplicature of the faux of the corolla of that genus, and it has not a bulbous root. Mr. Backhouse agrees with us that it is nearer Clivia than Vallota : so near, that I am not sorry to transfer one of the two generic names which that plant has borne to the present. Mr. Backhouse alone -has imported ripe fruit ; and the seeds which he describes are in appearance similar to the so-called bulbiform seed of other Amaryllidaceous plants, Crinum for example. We shall conclude this article with a description from the living plant, by Mr. Backhouse, which accompanied the specimen.

Descr. " After removing the flower-stem, the plant was taken out of the pot, and the earth thoroughly washed from it, so as to allow a complete investigation of its root. This was done with a view of relieving the plant from the encumbrance of a ball of exhausted hard earth. The vertical root-stock is about four inches long, cylindrical, and truncated ; the lower two inches are bare and like a section of a broomstick, about an inch in diameter. From the upper two inches protrude numerous whitish branched fibres, about the thickness of a goose's quill, clothed with a short pubescence on their younger portions. The leaves on our oldest plant were twenty-three in number, in opposite rows, the widened base of each leaf embracing that of the opposite one ; and in this respect, as well as in the root, resembling Clivia. The leaves of our plant are not linear nor rigid, like Clivia, but are linear-lanceolate and stout, and exhibit not only the longitudinal nerves, but some of the stronger transverse partitions ; like those of Clivia, they are perennial. In strong plants they come up from the centre in series of four to five at once, quickly succeeding each other; and about the time that the first of the new series is matured, the flower-stem is pro- truded between the outer one of these and the last of the next older series. The new leaves are of a rather brighter green than the old ones. The flower-stem is flattened, about a foot long, and supports an umbel of twelve to fifteen pedunculate flowers, at first enveloped in a sheath, composed of membranous and membranous-margined bracts. The stamen and style, when the flowers begin to open, are decidedly declining ; but the expansion of the flowers carries the upper stamens a little out of this position, and spreads the whole of them. So far as we have seen, but one ovule in each cell swells. Once, one in each of two cells was matured, and the third was abortive. In two other instances only one in one cell matured, and those of the other cells were abortive. I did not examine minutely the original number of rudimentary ovules. The seeds, being valuable to us, were not cut, so as to examine their internal structure ; but their size was that of a smallish horse-bean, and, though less rugged than those of Crinum, decidedly ' bulbiform at least so both William Wood and myself considered them. They were sown immediately, under the idea that they would not keep, and they quickly pushed up each a leaf. The capsule turned of a brownish colour and became soft, and the integument of the seed was moist ; and on a portion of the exterior being accidentally rubbed off, a silvery membranous coat, like that of the bulb-seeds of Crinum, was exhibited. Our old plant has for the last two years produced fresh leaves and a flower-stem about every four months. It has sent off several suckers from the portion of the root-stock which produces the fibres (if so the thick roots I have described may be called). If the flower-stem be kept in water, possibly some of the capsules may swell a little, so as to exhibit the number of the rudimentary ovules. The corollas are deciduous, as in Clivia, to which I certainly think the plant nearer than to Vallota. The flowers expand about two at a time daily, or in two days or longer periods, but remain so long as to form, along with the others also expanded, a fine head for from two weeks to a mouth, according to temperature.

Clivia miniata (Lindley) Regel

Gartenflora 13: , pl. 434. 1864.

Amaryllidaceae J. St.-Hil. - Missouri Botanical Garden

Alliaceae - Kew

Synonyms :

Clivia grandiflora; Imanthophyllum miniatum; Vallota miniata

Homotypic Synonyms:Imantophyllum miniatum (Lindl.) Hook., Bot. Mag. 80: t. 4783 (1854). Vallota miniata Lindl., Gard. Chron. 1854: 119 (1854). Himantophyllum miniatum (Lindl.) Groenl., Rev. Hort. 1859: 125 (1859).

Heterotypic Synonyms:Clivia sulphurea Laing, Wiener Ill. Gart.-Zeitung 2: 275 (1858). Himantophyllum atrosanguineum F.N.Williams, Cat. 1888: 20 (1888). Imantophyllum atrosanguineum F.N.Williams, Cat. 1888: 20 (1888). Clivia miniata var. citrina W.Watson, Garden (London 1871-1927) 56: 338 (1899). Clivia miniata var. flava E.Phillips, Fl. Pl. S. Africa 11: t. 411 (1931).