Summer’s winding down and crocus blossoms are on their way. Not the sweet little flower that you expect as the first sign of spring, but fall crocus and its autumn-blooming companions: colchicums, rain lilies, spider lilies and oxblood lilies.
“Fall bloomers get me through this final hot month of September and remind me that cooler days are on the way,” said Chris Wiesinger of Southern Bulb Co. in Tyler, Texas. These fall bloomers can also reward Atlanta gardeners many times over with a burst of exuberant growth in the next month or so when everything else in your garden is looking a little tattered around the edges.
If you don’t have these in your garden, it’s not too late. Plant a few good-size bulbs in early September, and they should bloom for you before fall is gone.
Wiesinger has created a business out of finding and growing tough heirloom Southern bulbs, many of which are called surprise lilies or naked ladies. “Since they tend to bloom when there’s no foliage around, people are surprised to see this long stalk, with beautiful intense color at the top of it which seems to pop up overnight,” he said.
One of the South’s best-known fall bloomers, lycoris, the red spider lily, grows on old home sites all along the Eastern seaboard and across into Texas. Lycoris radiata has quite a few common names. Brent Heath, of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, Va., says in South Carolina and along the Atlantic Coast they’re often called hurricane lilies. Around Williamsburg and Yorktown, Va., they’re known as British soldiers because of their bright red color.
Lycoris are not lilies at all, but members of the amaryllis family. The vermilion blooms have long, feathery red pistils that give the flowers a spiderlike appearance.
Some years the bulb may put out leaves but no flowers. That’s generally an issue in dry years. “They don’t like their roots to dry out,” said Heath, but he suggested that gardeners not give up on their bulbs. A year with normal rainfall, or sufficient irrigation, will have the plants blooming again.
Oxblood lilies, Rhodophiala bifida, also are members of the amaryllis family. The scarlet blooms are trumpet-shaped, and an established clump will have a succession of flowers for up to four weeks.
Heath’s favorite bulbs for fall blooms are the colchicums. Plant these in early September and with enough varieties, you can have blooms through November. Brent and Becky’s Bulbs carries 16 forms, ranging in color from white to deep violet. Heath says sterile varieties, including ‘Waterlily’ or Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’, will last longer in bloom.
Colchicums grow from bulbs ranging from golf ball to baseball size. The bloom emerges in the fall within weeks of planting, and the flowers can be 6 to 8 inches across. Colchicums also perform the trick of blooming without benefit of soil or water. You can put a colchicum bulb in a saucer and place it on a window sill. When the day is the right length, the bulb will bloom. But then get it into the ground right away so it will bloom again for you next year.
Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus, is another fall bloomer that can be planted now. The flower is purple and blue striped with bright red pistils. You can collect and dry the stigmas to harvest your own saffron, worth more than its weight in gold.
Crocus speciosus is the real autumn crocus, cultivated in gardens since the 1800s and ranging in color from white to violet and mauve. These are best planted in a protected, sunny location. Heath recommends growing them through a light groundcover like vinca minor, which can keep the leaves from drying out during the cold of winter. Just as with spring-flowering bulbs, the leaves need to grow on to gather energy to produce next season’s flowers.
Finally, a group of bulbs known as rain lilies, Zephyranthes labufarosea, also fall into the surprise lily category, with large pink or white flowers that bloom with the late summer rain.
For general planting conditions, these bulbs will grow well under deciduous trees, where they benefit from the winter sun. Since the leaves and flowers are a surprise, it can be easy to forget where they’re planted in your garden. If the bulb label is discrete, insert it in the middle of your cluster to mark the spot. Plastic golf tees are another way to mark the clump.
Another idea is to use perennials like day lilies to mark the spot where the bulbs are planted. That one spot will have lycoris foliage in the spring, followed by day lilies, then the lycoris flowers shoot up through the day lily foliage and give you a shot of color in the fall when you and your garden are most likely to need it.
Where to find them
Garden centers stock what we like to buy, and that tends to be what’s in bloom right then. Bulbs and corms like these fall bloomers may be difficult to find locally but are widely available through mail order.
A good-size bulb or corm planted in early September should bloom for you this year and grow and multiply under the right conditions.
Two mail-order nurseries that supply bulbs proven to survive our Atlanta conditions are
www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com and www.southernbulbs.com.
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