Few enjoy enviable popularity among tender bulbous plants, and others are treated as such.
Most relatively neglected species deserve greater popularity, and none deserves it more than the summer-flowering species of Hymenocallis, or Ismene, as it’s commonly referred to and listed in most catalogs.
Hymenocallis clothing, better known as Spider-lily, basket-flower, or Peruvian daffodil, comes to Northern Hemisphere gardens from the Andes of Peru. Few flowering plants bloom as promptly after being planted.
Spider Lily’s Features
First comes the glossy green, strap-shaped leaves reaching 1 ½’ feet long. Soon after that, sometimes within a few days, appears the flowering scape.
Standing 1 ¼’ to 2’ feet above the ground, it bears two to five flowers in an umbel. The foliage remains attractive even after the flowers fade, usually until frost.
The opening bud reveals a flower with the rare beauty of form. The white flower has a 4” inch funnel-shaped green striped and fringed crown with long thread-like filaments. A bonus, often so rare in modern gardens, is the fragrance.
Hymenocallis Cultivars For Planting
Hymenocallis clothing ‘Advance’ is a horticultural improvement, having more vigorous plant growth and larger flowers than its species.
Hymenocallis festivals, a hybrid cross between Elisena Iongipetala and Hymenocallis clothing, is pure white with long, gracefully recurved perianth petals.
Hymenocallis hybrids ‘Sulfur Queen,’ another hybrid (Hymenocallis clothing X Hymenocallis agencies), is soft yellow.
All these are suitable for summer bedding and spotting here and there in the mixed border. Culture is as easy as the plants are beautiful. After the first of May, bulbs can be set in almost any well-drained soil.
Plant them 6” inches apart and with 3” inches of soil covering the necks. For best performance, especially in maintaining the vigor of the bulbs, the soil should be rich, deep, and humusy. Water the plants liberally during dry weather.
When frost cuts down the foliage, bulbs should be dug without damaging the fleshy perennial roots more than necessary.
For winter storage, the soil should be packed around these roots to prevent excessive drying, but the bulbs should be stored dry at a temperature of about 60° degrees or slightly lower.
The numerous offsets by which the plants increase may be grown to flowering size, yielding a good stock of flowering bulbs in a few years after the initial investment.
44659 by Richard D. Roe