In the spirit of renewal and fresh new yearness...there is the astonishing and glorious amaryllis bulb, with a "sparkling velvety sheen" on its petals - a minor botanical miracle that repeats itself like so many unfolding petals each year...
...the beauty is in the progression...
Faced with this seeming relic of the dinosaur ages, this sandy, ugly, light-deprived, generally albino from the box item seems a bit scary and unfamiliar for the squeamish...what good could possibly come of it?You need to find dusty white marble chips, spanish moss, sphagnum moss or soil to plant the odd thing with faith in what you know is on the way...and then comes the waiting, and the need for patience. This year, my
first bulb took almost 4 weeks to sprout - then stayed at the same one inch high green tip level for another 2 weeks - maddening, frustrating. Couldn't help but wonder if it was a dud, whether my window made it too cold, or could it get too much light?Finally it has shot up a bit - and is on it's way to sunshine and glory...The progression is truly the magic...and it gets you through the cold winter days, it is something to look forward too - which my mother taught me as a child...this captures the idea a bit - alth
ough I think the flowers to the left, in the glass vase, are actually narcissi...which are 
probably kissing cousins to the amaryllus and are lovely too...There are many varieties, only a few of which are immortalized here. Each year, as a child, I waited for the time when my mother, sister and I would head to the local greenhouse to choose several varieties for the winter season, not planted all at once, of course, so as to stagger the frustration in waiting and joy in beholding. I felt very slightly cheated when in my fourth grade class, we read The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbit, as if someone had stolen the knowledge of my mother's wintertime treasure...(see Amazon.com for reviews of this famous children's book).
I am a big fan of botanical drawings as well, so, naturally, looked to those for some aesthetic treats as well. This selection of botanical drawings capture the wildness and variety of amaryllis plants along with the photos above...
...and artists have had th
eir way with the amaryllis too...
From Wikipedia:
Amaryllis is a monotypic genus of plant containing one species, the Belladonna Lily (Amaryllis belladonna), a native of South Africa.
The Belladonna Lily is a bulb plant, with each bulb being 5-10 cm in diameter. It has several strap-shaped, dull green leaves, 30-50 cm long and 2-3 cm broad, arranged in two rows. The leaves are produced in the autumn and eventually die down by late spring. The bulb is then dormant until late summer.
In late summer the bulb produces one or two naked stems 30-60 cm tall, each of which bear a cluster of 2 to 12 funnel-shaped flowers at their tops. Each flower is 6-10 cm diameter with six tepals (three outer sepals, three inner petals, with similar appearance to each other), white, pink or purple in colour. This flowering pattern is the cause of its common name 'naked lady'. The scientific name Amaryllis is named after a shepherdess in one of Virgil's pastorals, and means any young rustic maiden.
The Belladonna Lily was introduced into cultivation at the beginning of the 18th century. However, most of the so-called Amaryllis bulbs sold as 'ready to bloom for the holidays' belong to the allied genus Hippeastrum, despite being labeled as 'Amaryllis' by sellers and nurseries. Adding to the name confusion, some bulbs of other species with a similar growth and flowering pattern are also sometimes called 'naked ladies', even though those species have their own more widely used and accepted common names, such as the Resurrection Lily (Lycoris squamigera).
Information and symbolism commentary and metaphor and cultural applications re: the amaryllus abound...And now for some bits of poetry that capture more, from:
http://www.poetryfish.com/currentPoets/carpenter.htm
Carol Carpenter:
"...into this fleshy, green stalk of a woman, into Aunt Amaryllis who unravels her layers of brown and blooms four crimson heads: One blushes the blood of birth. One gulps the scarlet moon rising. One ignites her curls of fire while the other one winks one red eye for Aunt Amaryllis who struts her green-booted self into this night of reckoning."
and another one from:
http://www.slate.com/id/2066251/
Amaryllis
after Rilke
By Mark Wunderlich
Listen to the poet reading this poem.
You've seen a cat consume a hummingbird, seen
it scoop its beating body from the pyrocanthus bush
and break its wings with tufted paws
before marshaling it, whole, into its bone-tough throat;
seen a boy, heart racing with cocaine, climb
from a car window in a tumble to the ground,
his search for pleasure ending in skinned palms;
a woman's shouts as she is pushed into the police cruiser,
large hand pressing her head into the door,
red lights spinning their tornado in the street.
But of all that will fade; on the table is the amaryllis,
pushing its monstrous body in the air,
requiring no soil to do so, having wound
two seasons' rot into a white and papered bulb,
exacting nutrition from the winter light,
culling from complex chemistry the tints
and fragments that tissue and pause and build
again the pigment and filament.
The flower crescendos, toward the light,
though better to say despite it,
gores through gorse and pebble
to form a throat, so breakable, open
with its tender pistils, damp with rosin,
simple in its simple sex, to burn and siphon
itself in air. Tongue of fire, tongue
of earth, the amaryllis is the rudiment
of form itself, forming its meretricious petals
to trumpet and exclaim.
How you admire it. How you see it vibrate
in the draft, a song it is, a complex wheel
bitten with cogs, swelling and sexual,
though nothing will touch it. You have forced it
to spread itself, to cleave and grasp,
remorseless, open to your assignments—
this is availability, this is tenderness,
this red plane is given to the world.
Sometimes the heart breaks. Sometimes
it is not held hostage. The red world
where cells prepare for the unexpected
splays open at the window's ledge.
Be not human you inhuman thing.
No anxious, no foible, no hesitating hand.
Pry with fiber your course through sand,
point your whole body toward the unknown,
away from the dead.
Be water and light and land,
no contrivance, no gasp, no dream
where there is no head.
Happy new year!
