Dierama
Dierama pulcherrimum
Tall and slender, and unforgiving about drainage — waterlogged ground is what finishes it.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Pink
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Feeding
- Rose & flower
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Aug Flowering
- Aug–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 23.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A corm with fine roots beneath it
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 16 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 12–24 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
A corm is a season’s worth of stored stem: it is spent flowering and a new one forms on top of the old, often with cormlets around it. Roots are shallow and short-lived, so the planting depth and the drainage are what decide whether it comes back.
Chains of corms that resent disturbance completely: a dierama moved is a dierama that sulks for three years or dies. Plant it young from a pot and then leave it entirely alone.
The habit is Dierama’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.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Spider mites
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.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Spider mites
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.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Grasses, Agapanthus, Crocosmia, Kniphofia
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com