Specialty Gardening: Alstroemeria 'Sweet Laura' ?, 1 by Ursula

Ursula wrote:
Mike,

Alstroemeria species have a rhizome (sometimes hard to distinguish) from which grow very brittle fleshy roots. They must be handled extremely carefully.

This picture shows one year old plantils that grew from seeds I 'discarded' while cleaning and threw into a pot with Arum palaestinum. As you can see, the fleshy roots also produce some 'hairy' roots.

Grown up plants (2 or 3 years if grown from seeds) have an easy to detect rhizome, from which 'pend' many fleshy roots; these rhizomes can be separated every 3 years to reproduce the plant.

Hope this helps you to identify if what you have is an Alstroemeria or not.

Hugs,

Ursula