The amaryllis sold every winter is usually not an Amaryllis at all
Those big bulbs that bloom indoors at Christmas are mostly Hippeastrum, a South American genus. True Amaryllis has just two species, both from South Africa's Cape. Botanists argued for half a century over which plant owned the name, until an international congress settled it by decree in 1987.
Amaryllis is a tiny genus, the sole member of its subtribe. Its best-known species, Amaryllis belladonna, grows wild in the rocky southwest of the Western Cape, between the Olifants River Valley and Knysna. The second, A. paradisicola, is confined to the west of the Cape Provinces. Belladonna has been introduced to California, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
It collects nicknames: belladonna lily, Jersey lily, naked lady, and in South Africa March lily, because it tends to bloom around that month, while southern Australians call it an Easter lily. Despite all the lilies, it is only a distant relative of true Lilium. Victorian flower symbolism assigned it love, beauty and determination.
The naked lady name fits its habits. Leaves arrive after the flowers, strap-shaped and 30 to 50 cm long, rising from a bulb 5 to 10 cm wide. Each bulb sends up one or two bare, sturdy stalks 30 to 60 cm high, topped by two to twelve funnel-shaped blooms, each 6 to 10 cm across. They are usually white streaked with crimson, though pink and purple forms occur naturally.
The naming dispute began with Carl Linnaeus, who coined Amaryllis belladonna in 1753 when African and American plants were lumped together. Once they were split into separate genera, everything hinged on whether his type specimen was South African or South American. If American, the name would belong to Hippeastrum. Debate raged from 1938 among botanists on both sides of the Atlantic, as Alan Meerow and colleagues have summarised. The 14th International Botanical Congress ended it in 1987 by conserving the name for the African plant, anchored to a specimen in the Clifford Herbarium at London's Natural History Museum.
Source: Amaryllis
