Came across this ‘giant Peruvian daffodil’ last weekend at the Winter Gardens in Auckland. A knowledgeable gardener I was with recognised it and Winter Gardens horticulturalist Nick Lloyd kindly gave us a bit more detail.
Strangely, there are two forms of this bulb – the one that flowers in summer and has a winter dormancy come from above 3000m in The Andes, while this one flowers in winter, has a summer dormancy and is found at sea level. Both are deciduous
It is scented, something like a lily, but on a cool day I detected only a light spicy fragrance, barely there. The large flowers nod on their stems, but if you look into the trumpet, the green markings at the throat can be seen quite clearly.
The stems are about 500cm long and the flower as large as an adult hand (15cm in diameter), so yes, ‘giant’.
The bulb is named for where it comes from in Peru, the coastal area of Paramonga, which has a mild year-round climate (10-26C during the winter-spring growing period). It should be planted deeply to help keep it cool in summer and when dormant is should be almost completely dry.
The next part of its name honours German botanist August Weberbauer (1871-1948) who explored Peru extensively for new plant species, first arriving in 1901.
The bulb, part of the Amaryllidaceae family, was first described for science in 1949, although had been collected in 1874 and again in 1931 (this latter collection by Weberbauer). A 1975 article in the American Horticulturalist magazine describes seeing in 1965 some 500ha of these bulbs blooming in the Peruvian Andes. However, the author had not been able to simultaneously flower large numbers of these bulbs at the same time once they were in pots in the United States. Instead, they behaved more like Hippeastrums with irregular flowering over an extended period. Read the article here.
Sandra's Garden 