Description
This grows from smallish, slightly elongated bulbs. In summer growth starts with the production of blue-green, elliptic leaves some 10 cm wide, these are present at flowering time.
The flowers are yellow, with green tips to the segments and are borne on 30 cm stems in spring. It shows some yellow on the green part of the flower. Each tubular bloom is 1.5 cm wide and up to 8 cm long and they are borne in small clusters.
We find that this likes a loam-based soil (not peat based or multi-purpose type composts) with good drainage but plenty of water when in growth. In winter it must be stored frost-free (as this is not a totally hardy plant in the UK). It does however need to be kept cool in winter when the low temperature combined with dry storage, is needed to promote flowering. Restart the bulbs with good warmth and an initial deluge of weak high-nitrogen fertiliser from late April onward (not sooner) and as late as midsummer. This deluge of fertiliser starts growth and helps to promote flowering after the cool, dry, winter rest, by ensuring that the developing leaves reach their maximum potential quickly and without check.
Be warned it is a shy-flowering plant unless you get those cultural conditions right and so getting plants to flower well takes attention, care and skill. The fertiliser inundation definitely seems to help, as does being cool and dry in winter but then good and warm when you start the bulbs into growth. Phaedranassa (and Urceolina) also appreciate being left alone and are best not dug up and cleaned each year. Best of all, and if you really want to see flowers, then plant it in a greenhouse bed of rich loam, don’t lift or replant at all, feed it regularly and copiously, water it well when it’s in growth and keep it bone dry when it is dormant, above all, be patient. You may have to wait a few years before you see flowers. After many years of growing this, I am now inclined to say that it flowers badly and even looks stressed when grown in small pots.
Its natural home is said to be Peru, though it is now only known from Ecuador. This stock is directly traceable to an old Van Tubergen stock which has been in cultivation for over 60 years, perhaps even longer. (It originally came to Van Tubergen under the name of Urceolina urceolata). It does display leaf yellowing after transplanting, leave it alone and this vanishes with establishment. We have heard it said that this is virus, that is not proven but we feel it fair to advise you that some say it is, others say that is nonsense and it is the nature of the plant which simply grows so fast that it isn’t able to take up sufficient nutrients in a short time.
