I like growing South African and Namibian bulbs. There are some commonly grown ones you’ve almost certainly encountered - amaryllis, clivia, ledebouria, oxalis - and types that are rarer. The genus haemanthus is one of my favorite of these geophytes, though I keep a variety and am quite drawn to ledebouria as well.

Within the genus of haemanthus, I started with the moderately common Haemanthus pauculifolius a few years ago (though I ordered Haemanthus albiflos from Glasshouse Works, but they’re very similar and easily confused so they must have mislabeled their specimens), and I was pretty quickly charmed. I added three rarer species from Shire Bulbs to my roster last year: Haemanthus crispus, Haemanthus humilis subsp. hirsutus, and Haemanthus deformis.

This winter, all four of my haemanthus species are doing well, but my two Haemanthus deformis bulbs have been a particular delight to watch as they’ve settled in and are now growing mature leaves for the first time with me. H. deformis leaves are showstoppers! They have a kind of alien quality to their size and growth habit - you can already see the appeal in the photos below, but the leaves should get even bigger and more tightly flush to the surface with age. The first image is how the bulbs arrived in December 2021 after I’d potted them, and the second two images are of them this winter - with some surrounding plants included to provide a sense of scale in the second photo. (The white marks on the leaves are just mineral deposits from watering.) You can see that I already needed to pot them up again this fall.