I have quite a few Clivias (Miniata) in the back shade garden growing beautifully under the trees. Some are a few years old already as I inherited them when we moved here. Then a few more were purchased two years ago and a handful more in August last year. The oldest ones have flowered beautifully in the past. There are two really big plants and when they flower they are quite beautiful. They’ve flowered for three years in a row, if I remember correctly, and its always starts around September (Beginning of Spring).
But here is a very strange type of growth on one of the plants. I don’t think this is one of the new ones … it doesn’t look new, but I could be wrong. As you can see from the photo, instead of growing a stem and the flowers forming a cluster atop of the stem, the cluster is developing without a stem so its sitting in the leaves.
Photos of the “deformed” Clivia – click to enlarge:
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Any ideas as to what would cause this and whether there is anything I can do to correct it?
4 replies on “What’s up with this Clivia?”
I had the same with my clivia’s. Looks like it is especially the early blooms when it is still a tad cold. Moved them to a spot where there is a bit more sun filtering thru and fed them potasium. They did push the flowers out of the leaves about a week later. Hope this helps
I have seen this before on other plants, but always thought it was virus related. The cold period does seem like an answer though.
Hmmm … it is flowering 5 – 6 months early so it makes sense that it hasn’t had a long enough cold period, but I wonder then why THIS Clivia thinks its spring. Very odd. So then it doesn’t seem as if it is sometjhing I am doing wrong specifically which is good news (for me – not the Clivia 🙂
I did a quick Google search and found a Clivia forum on GardenWeb… it seems that this is usually related to the plant not having a long enough cold period. Since most of those people grow theirs in pots and have to bring them indoors for winter, their advice is not always applicable. Other posts seem to indicate that sometimes this just happens with Clivias.