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Amaryllis belladonna L. — Amaryllis belladonna, or Jersey Lily. A bulbous plant of the Amaryllidaceae family, native to the coastal and mountainous regions of the Cape, in South Africa, where it grows in the fynbos and on well-drained rocky slopes, often exposed to sea winds and prolonged summer droughts.
It develops a large, tunicate bulb, whose remarkable peculiarity is to produce leaves and flowers in opposite seasons: the leaves, long and ribbon-like, dark shiny green, appear in autumn and persist until spring, then disappear entirely during the summer. It is then, at the end of summer and in autumn, that the robust, sturdy floral stems emerge, of a pinkish-brown, entirely devoid of leaves, each bearing an umbel of six to twelve large funnel-shaped flowers, bright pink to purplish pink, slightly fragrant. This phenological paradox — flowering without leaves — has earned it the English nickname naked lady .
The sole representative of the genus Amaryllis , it should not be confused with the Hippeastrum from South America, commonly sold under the same common name. In cultivation, it requires a warm, sunny, sheltered location, on light and very well-drained soil, with the bulb planted superficially, the neck flush with the surface. It dreads cold and wet winters, but acclimatizes remarkably in Mediterranean gardens and mild coastal regions, where it can naturalize and form beautiful lasting colonies.