Amaryllis

An Amaryllis.... by any other name would look as beautiful....... more

by Andrea Lazar

Title

Amaryllis

Artist

Andrea Lazar

Medium

Photograph

Description

An Amaryllis.... by any other name would look as beautiful....

Its name means 'to sparkle' and is also known by many names, including 'belladonna lily,' 'Jersey lily' and 'naked lady.'
The Amaryllis, only a distant relative of the true lily (Lilium), apparently suffers from an identity crisis. The name "Amaryllis" was originally used for two different plants, one from South Africa and the other from South America. It took an international debate among botanists from 1938 to 1987 to resolve the problem, with the 14th International Botanical Congress declaring the rightful owner of the name to be the South African variety. The correct name for the South American plant, they decided, would hence forth be "Hippeastrum" - which is the winter flowering bulb we all know as "Amaryllis."
Then there was some crossing of the pink "Amaryllis belladonna" in Australia in the 1800s with no-one-knows-what species that resulted in color variations of white, peach, magenta and reds, which were then crossed back onto the original and resulted in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and intensities of pink, and even pure white. Then came stripes, veinings, darkened edges, white and yellow centers..... like this beauty that graced my window sill and brightened several weeks of my life last winter.
Whatever its real name is - I am awed by its complex beauty and history.

Uploaded

September 18th, 2013