Description
Flowering from September onward. This bears a head 5 cm across made up of very colourful filaments and flowers of the same shade, all compressed within six large vivid red bracts. Yellow anthers make a spectacular red and gold effect. The resulting flower heads are stunning vivid crimson-cinnabar and are justifiably esteemed.
This is the largest of the showy brush types. Enjoys good watering when in growth in winter, with due respect to the temperature, but needs to be DRY in the summer. Plant 25-40% above the soil in a very freely draining compost. In the wild this grows on quartzite mountains around seasonal watercourses.
A superb form of this fabulous species, from the fringes of the boundary between winter and summer rainfall in the west of South Africa. The name ‘splendens‘ has been applied in the past to the populations from which ours are raised however they fall comfortably within the coccineus complex. Some plants have dark maroon bands on the lower leaf undersides but in all plants the broad foliage is a beautiful and distinctive bluish-green.
N. hemisphere plants, fully in phase (not South African imports).
