Amaryllis
Hippeastrum hybridum
Midwinter flowers from a fat bulb that sleeps the rest of the year — the dormancy is the part most people get wrong.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Part shade
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- January
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Mar–Sep Spring Growth
- Sep–Nov Winter Dormancy
- Nov–Dec Bud Break
- Jan–Jan Bud Break
- Plant spacing
- 11.8 in
- In-row spacing
- 11.8 in
- Between rows
- 15 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A bulb with fine roots beneath it
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 16 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 6–12 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
Roots thread down from the base plate each season and are shed each season, and they go no further out than the leaves. Everything the bulb will store for next year is gathered in that narrow circle before the foliage yellows, which is why cutting the leaves early costs a flower.
The thick perennial roots are never allowed to dry right out, even in the dormant months, and the bulb is potted with its top third standing clear of the compost. Both rules are about keeping the neck dry and the roots alive.
The habit is Amaryllis’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
The ASPCA row names the genus only, which covers our Hippeastrum hybridum. Its separate Amaryllis entry is Amaryllis spp., a different genus, and says nothing about this plant.
- Mealybugs Mealybug hidden down between the scales of the bulb
- Narcissus bulb fly Narcissus bulb fly larvae inside the bulb
- Root & crown rot Bulb rot from watering while the bulb is dormant
- Red blotch (Stagonospora), which streaks the leaves and flower stalks red
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Mealybugs
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Mealybugs
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Green-leaved houseplants with red flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com