September 13, 2022
Last week I came home from a trip to Santa Fe to find the oxblood lilies up and blazing in the back garden. Yesterday, after a weekend trip to Houston, I found a second round in fiery flower. Bonus!
Oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) are a passalong — but also purchasable — late-summer bulb from Argentina, which resettling German immigrants in the late 1800s brought to Central Texas. They love our hot, humid subtropical climate.
Aren’t they dreamy? These heralds of autumn have me dreaming of 80-degree fall weather to come.
My bulbs are elevated in the raised bed along the back of the house, which makes it easy to appreciate those red trumpets atop short stems.
Nearby, ‘Peppy Le Pom’ dwarf pomegranate is adding hot color of its own. Notice too the hot-pink of fallen crape myrtle flowers. That crape has flushed out happily after the recent rains, and a shower of tissue-petaled pink flowers falls constantly.
But back to the star of the late-summer garden, the oxbloods.
They will soon fade, and other fall-flowering plants will take their place in the spotlight. But for now that blaze of red makes my heart sing.
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