I’ve been conned. It’s the second flower spike on the Amaryllis, it has opened to reveal only three flowers instead of the four that I was expecting (since I got four last year).

It looks normal enough if you don’t know that it ought to have four flowers so I would have been better off ignorant. On the plus side, there are a pair of offsets growing that I will look after and let develop into new full-sized bulbs, though this will take a good few years. At the moment the offsets are about the size of a large marble and they need to grow to the size of a large onion before they will flower.

So despite a grand total of seven flowers this year, I think that’s pretty good considering the somewhat watery summer we had. I’ll be treating the bulb the same way this year as I did last. When the flowers finish and the spike dies, I’ll cut it down, take the bulb out of the pot to refresh the compost, try and separate the offsets and plant those separately and start the whole cycle all over again for next year. Once all danger of frost has gone, it will go outside and stay there until autumn.

I think it’s definitely worth the effort to have giant flowers like these in the depths of winter.