[Heinie]

I have a pot with a clump of 15 to 20 Gethyllis ciliaris bulbs of which 4 flowers opened on Christmas day for me.

These flowers have some very interesting things about them.

• It has a very strong fragrance.
• A bulb only produces one flower that grows directly from the bulb.
• Each flower has 6 very short filaments with 3 very long anthers on each filament. They could have up to 30 anthers per flower.
• The anthers roll up to a very short ball on the second day but the style remains very straight and upright and the same length as you will notice on the last 2 photos.

I manually pollinated the flowers and hope to get some seeds from them. Here are a few photos. The first 3 photos were taken yesterday and the last 2 were taken today.

[Alisdair]

Fascinating to see, Heinie, thanks very much! This is a winter-rainfall species, isn't it, so must have extraordinary adaptations to be able to flower successfully in summer?

[Heinie]

Alisdair,

Summer is their normal flowering time and then sets fruit in Autumn just before the leaves start growing. These plants produces leaves, flowers, and fruit all at different times of the year.