Yesterday, Saturday, March 31st, the Midwest Clivia group got together for our annual meeting. Barbara and Rashid Qureshi drove over from St. Louis with a car load of Clivia plants to show us. Rimmer de Vries drove down from Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his huge dark red Clivia miniata in his SUV. Rimmer got the plant from his parents' collection, so it's been around his family for a long time. He has it growing in a 10-gallon container, and it pretty much fills it all the way up! David Freeman drove his mother up from Kentucky to see the clivia plants. Kevin Akins drove over from Columbus, Ohio, with his SUV full of clivia plants in bloom. Susan Meagher (sounds like "mayor") and husband Steve came over from just up the road. Our daughter Andrea, son-in-law Randy, and the two grandkids were also here for the day.

Ruth Kassinger flew in from Washington, DC, for the day just to talk to a gang of clivia lovers. Ruth is working on a book on the subject of conservatory gardening; she hopes to have one chapter on Clivia. Kevin gave her a dwarf Chinese, in bloom, as a souvenir to take home. We wish Ruth the best of luck with her book!

The Midwest Clivia Group is an informal regional organization affiliated with the North American Clivia Society. We in the MCG have no officers, no dues, and our only regular function is the annual get-together at Clivia bloom time.

I was too busy to think of taking pictures. Sorry about that! Kevin invited the group to meet at his place in Columbus, Ohio, next year. We'll need to meet a week earlier, around the 22nd of March, 2008, to catch more plants in bloom than we had this year. So mark your calendars for next spring's meeting of the Midwest Clivia Group in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008.

My few blooms came two or three weeks ago, and last week's several days of clear, sunny weather heated the greenhouse up enough to make all the clivias in flower go over. That sufficed to have most of the blossoms falling off the umbels by yesterday.

Jim

My two clones of evansiae are now in flower, and I've crossed them with each other. In a few weeks, we'll see if I get any seed.

Clone #1 on the left is nearly pure yellow, while clone #2 on the right has traces of pink color on the tepals. The flowers are 4 to 5 inches across, on scapes 10 to 15 inches tall.

I'm more concerned with getting fertile seeds of the wild Hippeastrum species into circulation than I am with making interspecific crosses between the species. A year ago, two clones of H. aglaiae bloomed together, and I crossed those two, got good seed set, and have a couple pots of healthy young seedlings growing while having had a few seeds left over to send to a grower in South America so that he could propagate it.

All Solomone plants (unless specifically designated as clones) are grown from seed. They are selected or classified only after they have bloomed at least once. The lady in charge of the greenhouse, Marisol, sorts the plants by color and foliage, once they are in bloom.

These would probably have to be registered as "Groups" if Solomone were to officially register his names. Clonally propagated varieties are easily recognized as "cultivars," but a seed grown line that is selected after bloom is, to my way of thinking, more than a mere group. Since the old designation of "strain" was abolished, these could not be registered as strains -- but as far as I can see, that is exactly what most of them are.

The "Watercolor Washed" lines (pink and pastel) are characterized by having bitone petals and sepals. That is, the pink or apricot color on the petals is darker in some areas, lighter in others. The Solomone Watercolor Wash plants are similar to the Conway Particolor varieties in this respect.

A Solomone Watercolor Wash Pastel

The Solomone Charm series are selected for both plant and flower size. The "Charm" plants have shorter leaves than the standard Solomone Clivia plants, and the flowers are smaller. The Charms are selected by color as well, there being Charm Yellow, Charm Pastel, and occasionally, Charm Pink types.

The Solomone Variegateds are selected of course for leaf variegation. Leaf variegation often shows up in apparently unvariegated plants later on, and often in F2 generations of seedlings from unvariegated plants, we see scattered seedlings that show some variegation, at least while they are young.

So the Solomone Clivia types are pretty consistent as they come from the Solomone nursery, but their breeding is unclear, as Marisol makes no attempt to track the actual breeding of any given plant. We leave this as an excercise for the Clivia hobbyist, to sort out the breeding from his or her own subsequent breeding of Clivia.

Jim

The first step is to remove the entire plant, with roots and potting soil, from the old container. This can be a real challenge, if the plant has been growing undisturbed in the same pot for ten or fifteen years. If possible, I recommend that the container be removed from the plant in pieces.

For clay pots, tap the pot around the sides with a hammer until it cracks into manageable pieces. For plastic containers, use a stout, sharp knife and carefully cut from rim to base at three or more points around the rim, until you can lay the vertical strips out flat and move the plant off the old container.

Now, at this point a decision needs to be made. Are you going to really break up the clump, or should you just pot it up into the next larger size container? As long as you can still move the larger container with the plant in it, I strongly suggest potting up rather than dividing. There is nothing so magnificent as a huge, old clump of Clivia with a dense stand of shiny green leaves and, in spring, a half dozen or more scapes in bloom all at the same time!

The best time to do this is probably in spring, just after the plant has finished blooming. The plant needs to be in active growth at the time it is divided, or it may go into shock and just sit there for a year.

If you must divide, now comes the tricky part. If there is any potting soil left in the root ball, try to work as much of it out as possible. Discard the old potting soil. Then cut it apart, carefully.

For the cutting tool, my first choice is a very stout, large, sharp knife. The blade should be 8 to 10 inches long, and sturdy enough to have no risk of snapping. You want to cut through the underground rhizome, which is probably ¾-inch in diameter, without butchering all the roots.

The best way to do this is to cut down from the top, between the individual fans or divisions of the plant, to separate the fans from each other at the rhizome. Cut carefully, making a fresh vertical stab into the root mass for each separate division or fan.

After you have made your main cuts, you need to start trying to work the separate divisions out of the clump. The roots will all be intertwined and entangled, so some root losses are unavoidable. Just do the best you can, working a few divisions loose, then trying to untangle their roots with your fingers. It can be hard work for a very large, old plant.

Once the divisions have all been separated from the clump, you should leave them dry and open to the air for a week or two to let the damage to the rhizomes and roots heal. Put the plants in a shaded spot for this, out of any direct sun and protected from any rain.

After a couple weeks, you can at last pot up the individual clivia plants. Use your favorite clivia growing medium, if you have one that you know works for you with clivia plants. If you don't know what to use, I strongly suggest you use either a medium to small mesh orchid growing mix (bark chips, coarse perlite, vermiculite, and chunks of charcoal) or else a standard cactus and succulent potting mix.

When watering the newly-divided plants for the first time, I like to use a dilute solution of soluble plant food like Peters 20-10-20 and a growth stimulant like Hi-Yield Vitamin B1 with NAA. Use the plant food at one-quarter label suggested strength, and use the Vitamin B1 mixture at ½ tablespoonful per gallon.

Good luck!

Jim