Description
The loveliest and rarest of the South African Crinum species and also one of the largest flowered.
It has great big, stemless, white blooms with the outside flushed deep cherry red. The whole with an incredibly strong, sweet, almost overpowering perfume. The flower, typically, opens in the late afternoon shortly before dusk. The flowers are then very strongly scented particularly from the late dusk until about midnight.
Best in a pot in the UK in a very sandy (desert-like) well-drained soil. This is an arid-land plant which is periodically subject to inundation. Summer-growing, winter-dormant but water supply is the controlling factor in dormancy rather than the time of the year and as with many arid land species, they can be easily ‘shifted’ onto a summer growing cycle.
