acidanthera

I planted 90+ of these and none, except for one, flowered. what happened? Now the leaves look kinda spent and it's driving me crazy. would it be OK to cut the greens (which are about 1/2 brown now) and cover area w/ mulch?

Voss: yes, you can cut back the foliage,,,in your zone, they should be perennial. You had all foliage for every bulb, but no flowers, except for one? Sounds like they were planted upside down,,,the bulb expended all its energy to re-grow right side up,,,all i can think of why they didnt bloom. A great plant, you treat them like you would Gladiolus,,,,African Glad is one common name used for Acidanthera. There are many other common names for the same plant. If you think they may have been planted upside down, dig them up while they are dormant, and re position.

A lot of people in the UK have said the same thing ths year, it could be that the bulbs on sale were undersized but there are a number of opinions on this, I'll try and look them up later.

This message was edited Nov 3, 2004 5:55 AM

thanks for your responses. I was wondering why I hadn't heard from anybody--I knew I couldn't be the only person in this world who had these. I should have mentioned that except for 8-10 bulbs I got in trade, the rest came from Walmart. So the undersize theory seems to make sense. As far as planting upside down, it seemed pretty straight forward, but there were some where I wasn't sure and I just planted sideways. I will definitely pull a couple out to confirm. Oh well, there is always next year, right?

There are minimum sizes allowed for export and on these Gladiolus Callianthus it is 5-6cm. It also means that these minimum sizes should flower for the most part. So a size 8-10 definately should flower.

Planting them up side down makes no difference....they only will appear a little later, since the sprout has to make a longer way getting out.

Have these been planted in full sun?? Being in the shade, like in a border under trees, will cause no flowers. Also, when were they planted? It will take them about 90 days to start flowering.

hello bleek. I planted them in late april. they get sun most of the day. As I mentioned earlier, only 1 of 95 bloomed in late july. We had a wetter than usual summer in the houston area, and also I was careful not to overwater. I am disappointed 'cause this plant would have fit so perfectly in my planting scheme. While the greens were green they looked nice and healthy and I saw no signs of lack of fert, water or sun. Also, I'm not sure but I would swear that I have more than 95 green shoots, like some of them already multiplied and this would have indicated to my that they were doing OK.

But not ready to give up, I'll leave them in ground another year. I just want to cut the greens (well, mostly brown) off because plants are located in a very visible part of my yard and it just looks plain ugly. It drives me nuts!

today was a gorgeous day to be puttering in the yard (which I did). I cut the greens on the acidantherea (AKA peacock orchid). I checked a couple of bulbs and I looks like I planted correctly. I can also see that on the ones planted sideways the plant came up and are not perfectly straight but slanted a bit.

Hi, Vossner.

I had a rather odd year with my Acidantheras. I split my bulbs into two different pots early this spring, with the larger bulbs in one pot, and the smaller bulbs in another. The smaller bulbs all put out and amazing show of flowers. The older, larger bulbs put up a ton of greens and not ONE flower! Strange, but true. They should do very nice next year, though. We'll see. Otherwise I'll do what I did to my summer blooming calla lilly and threaten to throw it away... The thing bloomed two weeks later! Go figure.

Good luck with your flowers.

Lori

ladyrowan, I woman after my own heart! I "silently" threaten my trouble-maker plants and sure enough they come around. LOL. Would you believe that once I posted an email saying pretty much the same thing you said and I got not one but TWO emails from indignant people telling me plants needed "soft and gentle talking to" and that threats just would not do... so I sort of kept my mouth shut after that.

Anyway, I went ahead and cut the spent greens and will hope for beautiful, fragrant flowers next year. Gardening forces you into being patient whether you want to be or not, do9esn't it?

regards

Well, everyone treats their plants differently, and if threats are made in love, then it isn't quite the same. Perhaps it comes from being raised in a family where creative threats are the norm, or maybe I'm just really weird.

Anyway, my calla lilly bloomed, as you can see, then didn't bother putting up anymore blooms. So next year, I'm thinking a combination of more threats, and more coffee grounds should induce at least two blooms!!! If not, into the compost heap it will go. Or at lease an unloved part of the garden, where it can ignore me all it likes.

The funny thing about my Acidanthera is that the ones in the backyard are STILL blooming. I don't know why. They usually have died back by now, but some of the stalks are still putting out blooms. I've been tempted to cut them back, but I enjoy the flowers too much to do so til they've decided to go dormant for the rest of the season.

Lori

mine bloomed well this year. i ignored them too. no fertilizer and watered when i needed too. i live in the very hot south .

bulbs usually stop flowering when fixing to bubil( make babies) i also know some bulbs take two years to flower one year as a recoup period. and flower every two years.

give them a chance and see.