Albert's Greenhouse

I walked out my front door past two of my yellow clivias this morning, and found that one of them was finally in bloom. The yellow buds have been getting larger and larger for weeks, but it's been cold and rainy so the plant has not grown too fast.

The story of my yellow clivias is a long one.

Several ( maybe 5 or 6 ) years ago, before Clivias had experienced their current resurgence of popularity, there was only one Clivia commonly available. It had these beautiful orange flowers, and it was reasonably cheap. Not content to leave well enough alone, though, plant breeders were deep in development of a yellow flowered version of this orange mainstay of the tropical shade. Why exactly yellow flowers would be considered superior to orange is not clear - of course an additional color morph is nice, and it's a particularly long lived and attractive shade of yellow, but the plant does only flower once a year - most of the year its the deep green strap leaves that provide whatever interest there is.

So this yellow flowered Clivia appears in the White Flower Farm catalog for something like $500.

I don't know about you, but I don't believe I've ever spent more than about $100 on a plant. And that was a pretty big, pretty special plant. This was a clivia with mis-colored flowers.

Anyway, apparently there were people who were willing to drop that kind of money, or something close to it, for a clivia with yellow flowers. And this $500 clivia in the White Flower Farm catalog led to a sort of notoriety - people would use this as a benchmark to justify their ( slightly ) lower prices. It got entertaining. I searched E-Bay for the yellow clivia just to see what the current going rate might be, and to see what sort of justifications were currently being put out for the exceptionally high prices.

Now, the thing about Clivia is, it makes seed. It doesn't make a ton of seed, but it will grow from seed fairly easily. So, the inavailability of yellow clivia was sure to be a temporary phenomenon. And about a year after the appearance of the $500 yellow clivia, an enthusiast put some seedlings up for auction on E-bay for the grand price of $8.00. They weren't absolutely guaranteed to be yellow, but he said there was something like an 80% chance. I bought four.

My $32.00 investment in yellow clivia took about 4 years to first flower. I would say that this is partially because I'm not that great at growing Clivias. I leave them outside in the shade and hope for the best, occasionally watering or fertilizing as the mood strikes. I don't keep very good records either, but so far every flower that I've gotten from the four plants has been a beautiful light yellow.

The plants are clumping now, sprouting shoots from their bases. Their strap leaves are huge, maybe 3 feet long, but thin. They've moved from their original four inch pots up to 2 gallon tubs, and they seem to flower for me every year if I give them enough sun, water and fertilizer. I'm pretty pleased with my $32.00 investment.