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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Naked Ladies

The Naked Ladies are blooming by the side of my house. Here's what Wikipedia says of them ....

Amaryllis is a monotypic (only one species) genus of plant also known as the Belladonna Lily or naked ladies. The single species, Amaryllis belladonna, is a native of South Africa, particularly the rocky southwest region near the Cape ..... In late summer (August in zone 7) each bulb produces one or two naked stems 30-60 cm tall, each of which bear a cluster of 2 to 12 funnel-shaped flowers at their tops. Each flower is 6-10 cm diameter with six sepals (three outer sepals, three inner petals, with similar appearance to each other). The usual color is white with crimson veins, but pink or purple also occur naturally. This pattern of flowering at a different time from when foliage appears is the cause of its common name "naked lady". The species was introduced into cultivation at the beginning of the eighteenth century ...

Here are a couple of photos. The second one shows a huge black bee inside one of the flowers :) .......






4 Comments:

Blogger Liam said...

You Californians, always with the naked people all over the place...

Nice pictures. Isn't belladonna a poison?

I'm up for another scrabulous game if you are.

7:51 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

It is poisonous but I think the belladonna you're thinking of is not the balladonna lily but the deadly nightshade kind. Not sure which kind ladies used to take to make their eyes dialate and look pretty :

Yay - more scrabulous!

10:33 AM  
Blogger Jeff said...

You caught my attention with that post. Shucks. Aw, c'mon. Put some naked ladies up.

Watch out, I heard that Scrabble is out to sue the makers and users of scrabulous.

12:21 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Yes, this post will probably get as many hits as the one I titled "bra-less bubble heads" :)

Do you like scrabulous? It's still alive so far.

12:33 PM  

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