January 2024 – Gwenfar's Garden and other musings

Two very large flowers (bigger than my hand) facing off opposite sides of the large central stem. The colours are faded to lime green, with strong dark red markings running along the ridges on the petals, making it look stripy, except in the middle where the colour has joined up. It's a fabulous flower and wants us to know it.

Amaryllis ‘Papilio’

8 January 2024

In the depths of winter, one of the great floral delights that we can grow indoors (in the UK), are Amaryllis. This is A. ‘Papilio’, which is now in it’s third year of flowering. I have two others that flowered …

Focusing just of the tepals and you can see the detail of the curling with the purple-blue edging, and then the pistils & stamens extending out further again.

Billbergia windii in flower

2 January 2024

My friend Kate gifted me a Billbergia windii when we first moved to Penarth 18 months ago, and it’s now decided to flower. The flower is really quite something. I found it hard to photograph, but here a few that …