Description
Zephyranthes huastecana is a most remarkable Zephyranthes, it is very vigorous when happy and makes massive bulbs in time, perhaps the largest of all of the Zephyranthes species. It is reputed to get to over 7cm in diameter with age and establishment (that is in excess of x40 of the volume and weight of something like Z. jonesii) . It is certainly capable of reaching 5-6cm in diameter. Z.huastecana also makes very large and broad, flat leaves. The flowers too are large and they are produced early in the season, from March-April onwards. This early flowering puts it alongside the earliest species, Z. atamasco, but in cultivation at least Z. huastecana continues flowering on and off, in flushes, right through the summer until as late as November (under glass or in mild climates).
The flowers have very broad, overlapping petals, they open a light pink, with a small yellow-green eye but by the second day of opening, the pink tinge loses intensity leaving an equally beautiful pale rose in its place. The flowers can reach 7cm in diameter and are borne on stems that exceed 30cm as a rule. There is a noticeable, pleasant fragrance which may be stronger in the evening or just different then.
It sets good seed but makes offsets only very rarely, however the late Harry Hay told me that in his care, planted out in a cold greenhouse border and left alone, it regularly made offsets. Harry started watering as late as early June, to get flowers in July and recorded that it could set and ripen seed in just 19 days at this time of the year. We find that this doesn’t like to be disturbed, it likes to establish before it will settle down to flowering well. Thus there is nothing to be gained by planting larger bulbs, you might as well plant a (cheaper) slightly sub-flowering size one and have the same wait for flowers.
This plant was discovered in the Sierra Madre just south of Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico by Dr. Thad Howard (his number Howard 62-1). Thad records that it was also found at Chipinque Mesa in the same general area. For many years it was distributed as Zephyranthes “Horsetail Falls” (and incorrectly as Horsepass Falls). I am however unable to trace any formal botanical description and it may still be a nomen nudum. Its name refers to the spectacular Huasteca Canyon. Scott Ogden considers this plant to be a distinct and robust strain of Z. lindleyana whilst Marcia Wilson wrote of it as representing part of a species complex centred on the mountains between Monterrey and Victoria. Certainly the last word has not been said on this amazing plant, which I suspect bears some of the tell-tale signs of ancient hybridity.
First offered in our lists in June 1995, relisted in April 2017.
