An Amaryllis for DRY Summers!

The Southern California dry summers, so typical of a Mediterranean climate place special constrictions on living organisms. Like plants dropping leaves in the very cold winters of the more northerly portions of our hemisphere, plants have also adapted through dormancy to avoid the rigors of annual droughts in Mediterranean climates. This year in Santa Barbara, there has been no rain since early March - now six months ago! And it may not rain for another six to eight more weeks. This is NOT 'global warming'. This is simply one of our planet's oddest climates.

Growing up in the Tampa Bay area of the central Gulf Coast of Florida, it is weird for me not to feel raindrops, hear thunder, smell the rain nor see the lightning for so many months at a time. However, the plants and animals native to this region (and many other Mediterranean climates) have it all sorted out.

A plant native to the western Cape in South Africa, another Mediterranean climate provides a showy blast of color each mid-summer. Amaryllis belladonna begins growing foliage just after the onset of the rains in the fall. With the drying spring and summer, the foliage begins to brown and die off, neatly matching the available rainfall (none).

With the foliage 'missing', the plant disappears from sight - until the bloom spikes start appearing like erect tenacles from a buried octopus in mid-summer. In full bloom with flowers in shades of pink and white, they earn their amusingly genteel name 'Naked Ladies'. [In the Carolinas if they were up to no good, they would be 'Nekked Ladies'.]

Santa Barbara is treated every summer to a huge blast of pink from the Clark Estate - a mysterious ocean-front estate at the end of East Beach. Gardeners there have supported mass plantings of Naked Ladies that slow traffic.

Once the blooms have dried and fallen, the bulbs lie dormant until the fall rains begin again. Clever, eh?

Naked ladies can tolerate some frost - however appreciate good drainage and very little (if any!) water in the summer. They are available in many shades of pink and white - just look around as these great old landscape plants qualify as 'pass-a-long' plants as the bulbs are easily shared once the blooms drop off. Randy Baldwin and San Marcos Growers here in Santa Barbara offer a great selection.