Garden Life
Get creative with crinums
Kiran Narain

Two bulbous plants, belonging to the Amaryllidaceae family, Crinum and Nerine, brighten up the gardens in the plains of northern India these days. Though the former is quite popular, the latter needs to be introduced in gardens for its delicate beauty and cutting quality.

Crinum: The name is derived from the Greek word meaning "lily" as these are commonly called lilies. They come from tropical and sub-tropical regions and, therefore, vary in hardiness. Lovely bulbous plants with long strap-like leaves and beautiful fragrant flowers, crinum longiflorum was originally found in India and is commonly grown in parks and gardens as well as outside periphery walls.

Bearing umbels of tubular trumpet flowers in white, crinum once planted in deep and rich soil can stay there without much care for years together. It comes to life with the first showers of monsoon. Established clumps may flower for four to six weeks with about 12 flowers to a stem — the stem being between two to three feet fall.

The bulbs should be planted in well-dug, rich soil in a permanent place, with a part of the neck of the bulb out of the ground. It takes the bulb a few years to get established and bloom freely. Thereafter, nothing much has to be done to look after them but for to mulch them with manure. If grown in pots, re-potting should be done only after three or four years. They love full sun and are propagated by offsets.

Nerine: These are beautiful bulbous plants, also known as Cape Lily, like warm climates though they can resist a few degrees of frost. Nerine bear a head of several glistening pink, carmine or even scarlet and orange flowers in August and September, before the leaves appear.

Also known a Guernsey Lily, nerine is a long-lasting bulbous plant that resents shifting. Hardy enough for planting outdoors in most of our hill stations, the bulbs are to be planted nine inches deep, outdoors, in well-drained humus-rich soil in late spring or early summer. They can also be grown in pots. Water freely in active growth and repot only if necessary. Pots can be top dressed with rich compost. Propagation by offsets is the normal way but seeds can be collected when ripe and sown immediately to be germinated at about 18 to 21 °C.

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