Belladonna species or variety?

[arillady]

Could someone please let me know the name of this belladonna?
(Hope the first try did not go through when I pressed post instead of additional options)
Not that the rabbits eat the leaves or flowers - guess the tyre would make it easier to reach if rabbits like the flowers. The tyre is there to mark the spot on the driveway when the bulb is dormant.

[fermi de Sousa]

Hi Pat,
there's been a lot of discussion about these Amaryllis/Brunsvigia/Crinum/Cybistetes hybrids; they are horribly mixed up! Most likely it'll be one of the ones known as "Amarygia". I think Bruce Knight wrote about them in the (now defunct) Australian Garden (History?) Journal about them and argues quite forcefully that they are most likely to be a cross between Amaryllis and Cybistetes.
True Amaryllis should have all the flowers pointing to one side and not arranged radially as shown in your pic. It looks fab though! Let me know when you plan to split them up!
cheers
fermi

[arillady]

Thanks Fermi for that info. Did you ever meet a woman that came to Australia years ago from South Africa about Brunsvigia - just wondering who the lady was.

[Maggi Young]

My knowledge of such amaryllids could be written on the head of a small pin, Pat, but I have to say that is one beautiful flower....and has the benefit of appearing to be robust! Fab!

[Anthony Darby]

When I saw the heading I opened the thread thinking it was about deadly nightshade?

[Lesley Cox]

My knowledge matches yours Maggi but I can certainly admire such a super plant.

New Zealanders, especially in the country, farmers and the like, put old tyres around young trees in the expectation that rabbits are repelled by the tyres and won't cross them to get to the trees. It really seems to work too, though they look dreadful. Before we moved here, the previous owner had plants about 50 Pinus radiata in tyres. We always meant to remove them but somehow the trees grew too big and tall and now, we really need to saw through the tyres and remove them that way. I hate them. Roger planted potatoes in stacked tyres this last spring. Good crop of clean spuds, in a mix of mostly pea straw and pine bark with some grit.

[arillady]

Yes the tyres are unsightly Lesley - might be hard to saw the tyres off with the metal in them. We have lots of rabbits up in that part of the property hence the tyres.

[Maggi Young]

My sister Ann, in Dunedin, got a tyre garden when she moved house a couple of years ago!  There is a terraceing of old tyres built up in the garden, goes quite high.... she and Bill were pretty horrified w at first, but there was no way they could move them, they were retaing and enclosing a lot of earth! Ann has beavered a way ever since to cover the tyres with trailing plants and I think she's doing quite a good job .  The pic is from a year or  more ago....


Ann's tyrewall

[Paul T]

Pat,

Your Belladonna is what I think is known as a "Multiflora hybrid", with lots more flowers than the species, and radially arranged rather than to one side (as Fermi mentioned).  There are a number of them around.  I think a lot of them date from a century or so ago when there was apparently a lot of interbreeding going on.  I have a very similar one to yours (I can dig up pics if anyone is interested, including a photo of the individual florets), that I got from a neighbour who had had it growing in their back yard for years.  The bulbs were the size of footballs (Rugby, not soccer, for those listening in) and had up to 4 flower stems from the bulb.  Has never done as well for me, although I get a flower stem most years.  In my garden they are multiplying quite well, but not building up the size that they had in the neighbours garden.  Thriving on neglect and all that.   

[arillady]

Thanks Paul for your thoughts.