Description
This ranges through the mountains of Central America into the north of S. America. Ours was originally from Oaxaca, Mexico
A showy and attractive, large growing species. The bulbs make a tight clump of tufted foliage. Each large leaf can be 12cm across, subdivided into 8 or so leaflets. The 25-30cm flower stem carries up to a dozen flowers, well clear of the leaves. The flowers are of a good pink-purple with a yellow throat and a thin white band separating the colour zones.
This is not winter hardy in the UK and is best grown warm on a ‘Potato cycle’. Keep it dry (and frost free) from November to about May then start into growth in a fertile compost. It loves warmth and if it is grown well with good watering and occasional feeding, you can keep it in bloom all summer until the plant goes dormant at the very end of Autumn, in Oct-Nov. Readily grown but not a weed as it makes no seed and is relatively sparing with its offsets.
Oxalis magnifica was described in 1919 by Reinhard Gustav Paul Knuth, a German botanist commemorated in Oxalis knuthii and Euphorbia knuthii.
