Glory Lily (Gloriosa Superba) - is it gonna make it?

Hi everybody.

After weeks and weeks of desperately looking for a Glory Lily, yesterday I found a whole clump partially covered with some garbage on a construction site in my neighborhood. Unfortunately that model of development is becoming only too familiar where I live - old houses and their beautiful gardens are leveled out by greedy contractors building concrete-and-lawn MacMansions...

Anyway, I managed to salvage the following:
- full plants with their tiny and not so tiny white tubers
- a bunch of tiny white tubers with no plants attached
- some medium and big brown tubers with no plants attached

I have already planted everything - the plants in various locations in my garden (full sun, filtered light and part shade) and most of the plant-less tubers in pots. Could anybody tell me what to expect? Do the white tubers have any chance at all or it's only the brown ones that are going to make it? Also, how long will it take before I get new plants for the tubers?

Needless to say, any piece of advice would be highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot and Happy Gardening,
Enigel

I would keep them just below the soil so you can monitor them most easily. Just watch and see what comes up.

They will all be fine.

Thanks for your encouragement!

So far not much is happening in the pots and some of the full plants that I planted turned black and died. Nevertheless, I still have several plants alive and I lots and lots of bulbs that... "will all be fine"! Am I not lucky?:)

I am so jealous. I love the plant and now live in the wrong climate to grow them sucessfully except in a hothouse or conservatory. I do know something about them. LOL. Sometimes you learn more from your failures than your successes. You are in the perfect climate for them. They love the light and humidity. The white tubers are the newest growth. The ones with a brown skin like a potato are more mature. Either will grow for you if they have a 'nose'. This 'nose' is the point where the stem emerges from the tuber and must be planted at or close to the soil surface. It can look like just a bump or a bud and is usually located at one end of the tuber. So long as that nose is undamaged the plant will continue to grow even if the foliage has been destroyed. Any tuber that lacks the nose will not produce a stem. In that, it is like a Dahlia tuber. If you have multiple tubers connected at one point, you can separate them into multiple plant if you make sure they have a portion of the stem still attached to each tuber. You can cut the stem into multiple sections so long as it is not removed entirely. Enjoy your beauties, Jessamine

Thanks, Jessamine. After posting my inquiry I have also read some stuff about Glory Lily and I knew something about "noses". Unfortunately not all that many noses on my tuber bounty... What happens to the noseless tubers? Do they produce plants later on - like in a year - or just die? Also, the tubers of the plants that went brown and died are going to produce other plants next season, right?

There is something else that you might be able to advise me on. I read that once the plants are gone I should stop watering that spot because plant-less tubers are prone to rotting. Is that true? That would make it really hard for me since I have plants that are alive and well in the same spot where the tubers of the expired ones are. Do I dig up the tubers and plant them somewhere where I can *not* water them?! Gee, if I were a Glory Lily, I would very much mind being uprooted so many times after being trumatized by construction debris...

Since it is still in the middle of your growing season the ones that had the damaged foliage should put up new shoots. If they were dormant I would reduce water drasticly but they aren't dormant, just lacking foliage through damage. The tubers without noses are not likely to grow them. Sorry about that. Eventually they will either rot or deteriorate. Since they went through all that trauma you might want to give them a little vitamin B1 in the form of a root stimulator. It helps plants get through shock.
It is possible that a tuber without an obvious nose still has a few cells that can develop. Put those in a nursery bed and keep watch but don't push them with too much care. There might be a chance but don't get your hopes up. Jessamine

I've had a lot of bulbs that I thought died. So I emptied the pots to find alive bulbs but they just sit in the pots and don't do anything. After I planted them in a bed, they all up and grew. Maybe your lilies would benefit from going into the ground?

Enigel, how are your rescued tubers doing? So you see any new growth yet? Jessamine

Gloriosas here thrive on neglect. I have them in several beds. They multiply like rabbits. A year or so ago, I decided to dig up one of the beds and plant something else. I dug up two or three hundred tubers. These had multiplied greatly from the original ten that were planted. Anyhow, I thought I had gotten them all, however within a month or so another seventy five came up. I have dug a few up to put elsewhere. When I dug them up , I knocked off the old plant. They still came back up in the new location. So, dont give up on any of them.

How tall do they get in a season? I just planted my 2 last week. One had 3 noses on it and the other's noses seemed to have fallen off, but I planted it anyway. I sure hope they make it. They are so beautiful!

If they have something to grab onto, they seem to get a little taller. I have heard they can get up to eight feet tall, but mine usually get no taller than five or six feet.
I leave mine in the ground year round. I also dont worry about them getting wet. I water the area tthey are planted in just like I water everything else. This obviously is the perfect climate for these. They are the perfect plant. Plant em and forget em.

Hi everybody and thanks for asking about my glories!

Most of the tubers I scavanged produced a little bit of a plant, someof them have even prouced flowers, so I'm on the right track! Have you noticed that there is some sort of gardening fairness that makes one finally get the plants one really, really, really wants?

The sad thing is that I killed my first Glory Lily ever with my own hands! Hurricane Dennis was coming to Pensacola, so I spent at least two days trying to prepare my garden. That included, of course, potting the first and only itsy-bitsy Glory Lily I had at the time. After digging it out of the garden successfully, I snapped the plant while potting it. It really was a tragedy, for a couple of hours my mind would blank when trying to think about what had happened. After the hurricane - no significant damage this time - I planted again the bulb, but it hasn't done anything so far.

By the way, Rylaff is right about Glory Lilies being not fussy at all in Florida. In Septeamber I went home (that is, Romania) for a whole month and during my absence my watering system somehow failed me. My whole garden survived surprisingly well, but the Glory Liles really seem to be at their best!

Take care and enjoy the fall gardening as much as I do.:)