Description
The emerging leaves and stems are often tinged with bronze-red but I have to say that as time goes by I do not regard this as constant either within yunnanense or giganteum. The red colours fade quickly or slowly and by flowering time the mature foliage and stems of yunnanense are almost invariably dark green.
Compared to giganteum, the flowers of this form are slightly more closed and tubular and are inclined to be horizontal rather than inclined to hanging or downwards-pointing. The base petal colour is white in yunnanense, rather than the greenish-white of giganteum . C. yunnanense also has significantly more red in the throat and thus the contrast between the two coloured zones is much greater. In general, plants of yunnanense are usually slightly smaller in stature than the more westerly Himalayan giganteum that we are most familiar with . The evening scent on the flowers in all is superb, heady and delicious.
I am convinced that the flower of yunnanense is also more zygomorphic and thus less symmetrical, in this Chinese plant, it is one step further along the evolutionary road in the way that Sprekelia is an evolutionary advance on Hippeastrum.
As well as shorter growths, with fewer flowers, C. yunnanense does not, in my experience, make bulbs as large as giganteum, at the same age, that is just how this species is. At maturity also, the largest size of yunnanense, is never as large as the maximum size of giganteum. The bulbs are usually reddish tinged, as opposed to the tan to mid-brown coloured bulbs of C. giganteum proper from the western Himalayas and the darker, caramel brown bulbs frequently found in C. cathayanum.
