Another thank you to badthings@Flickr for sharing an image with us (original | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). Do visit the Two Gardens weblog; badthings (aka MMW) is the primary writer and photographer. Plenty of colourful images and some handy book reviews are mixed in with the erudite garden blogging.

Since I have a soft spot for South African bulbs, here's another. Haemanthus albiflos is commonly known as paint brush (though it is of course not the Indian paintbrush or Castilleja spp. of the Americas and northeast Asia). Note that in the linked page re: South African bulbs, a second species of Haemanthus is shown, Haemanthus coccineus. The scarlet-red flowers of Haemanthus coccineus helped earn the genus its name, which translates to “blood flower” – one imagines that if Haemanthus albiflos had been used to name the genus, it would not have been named as such.

Graham Duncan wrote an extensive article on Haemanthus and their cultivation, describing Haemanthus albiflos as “highly variable, evergreen and virtually indestructible”. The South African National Biodiversity Institute has an article specifically on Haemanthus albiflos, while Wikipedia provides summaries (and extra photographs and colour plates): Haemanthus and Haemanthus albiflos.