Ferraria crispa

A few years ago I was given some bulbs of this lovely little geophyte from the cape region of South Africa. It really is a strange and wonderful flower. It blooms every spring without fail and seems to thrive on neglect for the most part.

Ferraria crispa is a member of the Iridaceae in the same tribe as the Iris. Interestingly it is proportedly fly polinated and several references mentioned a scent mimicing rotting meat, but I can detect no such foul odour from my plants. The Genus was named as a tribute to the Italian Jesuit priest, botanist and botanical artist Giovanni Baptista Ferrari.

 After a bit of online research I found that there are some very striking colour variants of F. crispa and a handful of other species in the genus some of which are absolutely stunning!

I sourced some seeds from a seller in South Africa and ordered two, a paler colour variant of F. crispa and Ferraria foliosa. They arrived promptly and I sowed them in a very sandy compost mix, with a little extra lime under a layer of crushed 5mm pumice.

Germination was quite quick, 20 days later they are up and looking strong. From my reading it will be important to build the bulbs to a size where they’ll survive winter dormancy and come back next spring. If they do survive I will not expect flowers until possibly spring 2015.

I shall keep you posted!