Belladonna Weed

Features

• Amaryllis belladonna, known to many as "Naked Ladies" because the flowers are pink to white and bloom before the leaves develop, is found in loamy soils in seasonally moist sites in the Cape Floral Province, Africa. It has a great variation in time of bloom, starting in summer and extending into fall. It has naturalized in many Mediterranean climates throughout the world and is especially popular in California.
• Amaryllis and its hybrid relatives have relatively large bulbs (the size of a softball or larger), and grow with the top of the bulb at the surface of the soil. The flower stalk is about two feet tall (0.7 m). Flowering is in fall, with individual florets opening over a period of a couple of weeks. The hybrids bloom over a period of 6-8 weeks, with different plants blooming at slightly different times.
• Flowering may be stimulated by summer fires, clearing away the weeds and other plant debris over them, and/or summer thundershowers. The flowers appear before the strap-shaped green leaves, which grow throughout winter and die back in spring.
• The plants are hardy to light frost, but prolonged freezes or hard frosts may damage the leaves and prevent flowering the next year. These bulbs are grown widely in Australia, and also thrive in coastal areas of California (USDA zones 9-10). They are harder to grow in inland areas of the state, where they do not bloom as reliably. We're not sure if the better flowering on the coast is due to milder temperatures there, or fog and higher humidity during the summer.
• If you're trying them inland, very occasional watering may help as it will keep the fleshy roots from drying out. But too much summer moisture will rot them. Amaryllis are notoriously difficult to flower in other parts of the United States. If you're trying them in those areas, take special care to protect them from rain in summer, and avoid winter freezing. If you're using pots, make them large ones, as these are massive bulbs with very large root systems.