Bob Hobden wrote:
"Ian B" wrote

I have to say it looks more like the Clivia pictures to me. If it's
any help, it always has leaves. I've never seen it "naked" like the
amaryllis photo.

Thanks to everyone who has answered. Regarding the "overwatering" Bob
mentioend; to be honest it's been very definitely "underwatered",
verging on entirely forgotten at times, and never seems to have
suffered. There were times I wondered if it was plastic, considering
how little water it has managed on.

It was in my mother's hall, getting very little light, and when she
was ill and for a while after she died, it got no water at all, I
just forgot it. But it survived anyway. It currently lives on my
living room window sill (inside); I never saw it flower when my mum
had it but this is the second year it's flowered now, probably
because it's been watered occasionally and sees the sun. It faces
southish but there are so many trees it never really gets direct
sun, except in a dappled kind of a way. I did give it some solid feed
earlier in the year, "Growmore"
granular stuff, that I just mixed into the top of the compost. I
wonder if I should repot it, as it never has been.

How big might it get with love and care? I've no idea how old it is.


As you have discovered with love and care you will probably kill it.
With nearly total neglect it will gradually get bigger and bigger
until the pot cracks, then you repot in a bigger pot and you start
all over again until you can't lift the pot.

That conjured a low budget horror movie scene in my mind: we see a gardener,
an old chap with a kindly face, pottering in his green house... but then the
camera gradually pulls back to that plant in the corner- forgotten,
neglected, angry, and growing... growing...

Seriously, how much watering is overwatering? At the moment it gets a glass
full (literally) when I think of it.

Age is difficult because it sounds like you Mum treated it rather
badly with little light, I recently gave away one I grew from seed
that wasn't much smaller than your one and that was 4 years old.

Mum died four years ago, so it's considerably older than that.

BTW mine was originally my mothers, she died in 1993. I've also
inherited another one since with a different flower colour.

From reading this thread, inheritance seems pretty frequent. It may become a
tradition, the passing of the Clivia Miniata. "This one's been in the family
for four generations".


Ian