Episode 241: the paintbrush plant, Haemanthus albiflos

The paintbrush plant can grow into large clumps given enough room. Photograph: Cultivar413 on Flickr.

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Transcript

Episode 241

Jane Perrone 0:04
This episode is supported by True Leaf Market, sellers of heirloom and organic garden seeds since 1974. We all know keeping your soil in good heart is vital for good harvests. And now is a great time to rehab your garden by growing a cover crop. Cover crops improve soil quality in a sustainable way, boosting biomass and soil bacteria, adding nutrients, attracting beneficial insects, improving soil structure and so much more. To get your free PDF of True Leaf Market's Beginner's Guide to growing cover crops, visit trueleafmarket.com and search for 'cover crop guide' and you can order your cover crops online now at trueleafmarket.com using promo code OTL15 to save 15% on cover crop seeds. That's trueleafmarket.com, enter OTL15 for 15% off cover crops - some restrictions apply, see the show notes for details.

Jane Perrone 1:26
Hello, and welcome to On The Ledge podcast, in this week's show on getting my paintbrush out. Don't worry, I'm not going to be trying any podcast DIY but I am going to be talking about Haemanthus abliflos aka the paintbrush plant. Welcome to the show. My name is Jane Perrone. And this here podcast is On The Ledge. We're nearly five and a half years old now, so we're in school and everything! A podcast to teach you all about houseplants and if your name is Emily, Tabitha, Adina, Brian or Tracy, then it's likely that I owe you thanks because those are the names of people who have subscribed to my Patreon this week. Emily and Tabitha became Superfans and Edina Brian and Tracy became Ledge Ends, all unlocking extra bonuses. The superfans well they get 100 and exclusive cards which are heading out to Emily and Tabitha, this week in the post, and All five have unlocked extra exclusive content as well as my December mailout, and the first 50 episodes of On The Ledge ever made as well as ad free versions of the main show. So if you're interested in Patreon, then do check out the show notes at Janeperrone.com where you'll find out everything you need to know. And other ways you can support the show if Patreon isn't for you.

Jane Perrone 2:55
Just a reminder that tomorrow October the 18th 2022. I'm at the Garden Museum houseplant festival running a propagation workshop at two o'clock. Looking forward to that - you need to get tickets booked for the festival, and also there's a special ticket for the propagation workshop. I'm not sure if they'll have any left at this stage but certainly worth checking out if you're in the vicinity of London, the shows on all weekend, Saturday and Sunday, but I'm only there on the Saturday afternoon, so do look out for or listen out for my booming voice which is usually the way people track me down. And wherever you are in the world, you can book a livestream ticket for my appearance at the British Library coming up on November the seventh 2022 along with James Wong, Mike Maunder and Carlos Magdalena - we will be talking about - you guessed it, houseplants and details of both these events are in the show notes. And then also, let me just mention the Plant Ledger, my newsletter about the UK houseplant scene. It's out today and every other Friday. And this week, we're talking about waste in the Plant Industry - a good topic - plus loads of other news and events and chat. I put lots of work into the Plant Ledger so it's your one stop shop for all the latest house plant news in the UK - do go and check it out. You get a free in depth guide to dealing with fungus gnats when you subscribe. Bargain!

Jane Perrone 4:28
Right, on with today's show. We're talking about Haemanthus albiflos. Why, Jane? you may be asking, are you talking about this one singular species of plant that you can grow indoors that I've never heard of? Well, what a lot of things I do in my freelance life. It's a little bit selfish. I'm going to be honest. What often happens is that I get plant IDs about this particular plant, the paintbrush plant, perhaps more than any other plant. This is the one that people send me pictures often say, Jane, what on earth is this plant?

Jane Perrone 5:04
So, I did a similar thing for the herb green alkanet In the UK, where I wrote a blog post about it on my website just because I kept being asked about this plant and seeing people wrongly identify it. So I just wrote a blog post so that I could just go read this, it explains everything. Hopefully now that I have this podcast going out. Whenever I get a Haemanthus albiflos question, I can just direct them to the show. Perhaps you've never seen this plant, they paint brush plants. So let me draw you a little picture right now, a mental image. The main thing to note about these plants are the flowers. That's where they get the name paintbrush from. The leaves are green and strappy they come out from this central bulb. And and you end up with this kind of symmetrical looking arrangement of leaves one leaf coming on top of the other not explaining it very well. But um, the leaves aren't that exciting. The flowers are really the thing that you're in it for. And they look like a paintbrush. So if you can imagine a white paintbrush that's been dipped into yellow paint at the tip, that's really what you're looking at with the paintbrush plant and it's being held with the "paint" at the top. And of course, that's the bright yellowy orangey anthers that are loaded with pollen. And that's what gives you the yellow colour at the end of the stalklike stamens. Around those incredible pollen packed stamens are these greeny white bract structures, and they help to enhance that paintbrush look, because they look kind of like the part of the paintbrush where the bristles come out. And what's pollinating these amazing paintbrush flowers? Well, I've done a bit of searching around academic papers and books and so on. And there's kind of vagueish reference to bees and butterflies. But there isn't any research that I've found that tells exactly what the pollinators are through actual research and observation, which has been done with other plants. But there's lots of blogs that it hasn't been done with. I haven't found any evidence of exactly what the pollinators are of this particular species. But if anyone's got any insight into that, or has read that info, or research do let me know.

Jane Perrone 7:22
But you can see they're quite attractive because they are just covered with pollen and they're so bright that anecdotally they do seem to attract lots of bees anyway. This is a species that comes from South Africa, and it flowers usually sort of late spring to early summer there. And when you grow it as a house plant it can flower a different times and there are quite a few different species, I think more than 20 in this genus Haemanthus, and most of them are from Southern Africa and most of them have bright red flowers rather than the white, that's why they're often called blood flowers or blood lilies. One of the other species in Haemanthus genus is Haemanthus coccineus, which is often called April Fool's as a common name because it flowers around April 1, and as the name suggests, it does have these bright red flowers.

Jane Perrone 8:14
And they're all members of the Amaryllidaceae family, the amaryllis family: also the family that Clivia miniata belongs to, that other popular flowering houseplant with green strappy leaves. Oh and just to say you might see this sold under an old genus name of Scaxodus, which has been outdated but still sometimes comes up or might be present in old books. Now Haemanthus albiflos is a species that grows in coastal areas. And it's terrestrial in habit it grows in the ground from a bulb as I've already said: we call that a geopyhte if you want to add a new word to your botanical dictionary. And following on from those flowers come bright red berries, If they get pollinated, which are really quite bright and stand out really quite nicely. The CRC World Cictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants notes that the berries have a musty odour. I can't say I've ever smelled one. But if anyone's got some Haemanthus albiflos berries, please give me a sniff and tell me do they smell musty? I have to know! And according to that same book, there are some traditional medicinal uses for this plant in its native environment. One was a cough treatment and the other I was intrigued by - a charm to ward off lightning. Now that would actually potentially be quite handy if you were in a storm. I don't have any evidence to say it works, but I quite liked the idea.

Jane Perrone 9:46
And this is one that you'll find not in full sun in its native environment, but usually under other vegetation, so in sort of shrubby areas, forest areas - it's not getting exposed to the full sunlight. Although the bulb itself is usually partly visible above the soil, so that bit is usually green, and when it's planted in a pot, often people will duplicate that look by leaving part of the bulb uncovered to replicate how it grows in the wild. And this is also quite a popular landscaping plant in parts of the world where temperatures don't get freezing in winter. It's quite a popular one because it is just so tolerant and also drought resistant. The RHS class this as H2 in hardiness. So that means it can withstand temperatures down to one to five degrees centigrade, which is about 37/38 to 41 Fahrenheit. It doesn't want to be frozen, but if you're in a very mild part of the UK, you could try this outside or have it outside in the summer and bring it in in winter, or take it to a frost free greenhouse.

Jane Perrone 10:54
One of the other things that the scientific literature does know about Haemanths albiflos is it's quite variable. When you see specimens in the wild, they don't all look exactly the same. There are some that have very fuzzy pubescent leaves, furry leaves, and some that have smooth leaves. At one point it was thought that these were separate species. But I think taxonomists have decided that they're just variations within the one species which, you know, I think we've talked about on the show before for various other plants that this can happen. There can be a lot of variation within a species, the one that always springs to mind is Philodendron hederaceum in which is just hugely variable - the heartleaf philodendron. It turns up in all kinds of guises, but it is still the same species.

Jane Perrone 11:42
And if you want to see a beautiful botanical illustration of this plant, there's one in a book called Loddiges Botanical Cabinet. Now this was more of a catalogue than a book actually that was published over several years by Loddiges, one of the largest nurseries in London in the Victorian era, sadly no longer in existence. It went out of business many, many, many decades ago, at least 100 years ago. And this was really their kind of shop window for the plants that they were selling. And the addition from 1822 has got aHaemanthus albiflos. I'll link to that in the show notes for you to have a look at and a little description of the plant reads "This is a native of South Africa from whence the bulbs are occasionally brought over to this country. It flowered with us in the month of September, and seems to be sufficiently distinct from the pubescens, although it has by some being considered as the same species. It is easily cultivated in the greenhouse, requiring sandy peat soil and a moderate sized pot with a sparing supply of water, particularly during the season of the leaves decaying which is generally in the latter part of the spring in summer." So I mean, that's a bit confusing, because as we know, this is an evergreen rather than one of the Haemanthus species that has a dormancy period, but this is often the case back then, they didn't quite fully understand these plants, they may have been getting mixed up between two species. But yeah, Haemanthus albiflos is definitely evergreen. Perhaps their plant was just dying back because they weren't giving it enough water - that's entirely possible!

Jane Perrone 13:21
And the pubescens, will again that's referring to the variability within the species. You may well be asking what my houseplant God Dr. David G Hessayon, author of The Houseplant Expert has to say about Haemanthus albiflos. The summary is not a great deal. There is an entry for Haemanthus, it mainly focuses on the red-flowered species in particular Haemanthus katherinae which is the Katherine blood lily, which has got these amazing red firework type blooms, which look a bit like scarlet alliums, but he does mention albiflos in passing.

Jane Perrone 13:58
There is a bit more of a mention in fact, the Haemanthus genus gets two pages in the Reader's Digest book Success with Houseplants which is also one of my favourites. And this one does note that after several years, the bulbs produce offsets. Normally this is a plant that people tend to plant one bulb per pot, rather than you know crowding them together partly because it's a relatively expensive bulb to buy compared to say, I don't know, a daffodil or something. Plus also it does look quite striking as a single plant but the plant will clump up and produce these offsets which you can then separate off to make them more plants. It is like the Clivia one of those species that you don't want to overpot. So when you do pot up a bulb, just make sure you can fit kind of a couple of fingers of space between the bulb and the side of the pot. That way it will probably be as happy as it's going to be.

Jane Perrone 14:54
This is a really easy plant. This is one of the reasons why it's popular. One of the reasons why people still have this plant perhaps handed down from family member to family member and then need an ID because it just kind of sits around doing its thing. And people forget about it because it is very tolerant of neglect. And it's worth bearing in mind that this plant is usually considered to be a succulent because of those succulent leaves. So it might be a species that you find in cactus and succulent show tables. And just like other succulents, you need to, you know, water it generously in the summer and cut back in the winter, making sure that substrate is really nice and free draining and then you really shouldn't have too many problems with it.

Jane Perrone 15:42
As per its native environment, it doesn't want to be in full sun, don't keep it with your desert cacti, it won't be happy. That said, you know, the leaves will probably bleach out, but it will probably survive because it's such a toughy. But if you give it the right light, then those green leaves will stay nice and sort of firm and succulent without getting all pale and straw like would you do get if it gets too much sun.

Jane Perrone 16:08
It's funny, I've looked back in the newspaper archives for pieces about this plant. And it did get quite a few mentions in the 1970s and 1980s in various houseplant columns. And the thing that was most often noted was, "oh, the worst thing about this plant is trying to get hold of it" and that does still seem to be largely true today. If you go to Botanic Gardens you're quite often see this plant planted out in greenhouses, and if you go to cactus and succulent shows, you might well be able to pick one up there. If you want to get hold of the bulbs, they are occasionally available. There's a couple of listed on eBay in the UK right now. I think they're actually young plants rather than bulbs. And occasionally they will be in stock with bulb merchants. They are currently in stock at Farmyard nurseries as a plant, one of my favourite UK nurseries because they have a nice range of Saxifraga stolonifer, one of my favourite plants. And I think Kevock garden plants have also had them from time to time.

Jane Perrone 17:10
So keep your eyes peeled. If you are outside the UK, you might have to do your own research on that. But it's a plant that you will find, as I say popping up in unexpected places - it's the kind of plant that you might go to like I don't know, a garage sale or a tabletop sale and someone will have one for sale for 50p and you might be to pick it up. So keep your eyes peeled for Haemanthus albiflos!

Jane Perrone 17:36
One of the other things to say about containers for this plant. I don't think it's a particularly deep rooted plant so you're probably better off giving it more of a kind of a pan than a deep pot. I think that's a term maybe that's a term that's just UK but a pan basically means a shallowish pot. It can go in terracotta or plastic. It's not that fussy. If you are an overwaterer then you might want to go for the terracotta just to aid evaporation of excess moisture.

Jane Perrone 18:03
And one other thing to note about this plant it does have ciliated margins. What on earth are you talking about now jane, you may be asking yourself - well if you remember back to the Aeonium episode talking to Mellie Lewis about Aeoniums, were they too have these ciliated margins. And that just means they have kind of these little hairy bits on the edge of their leaves which are a bit like tiny eyelashes. Yes, the cilia or ciliate leaf margins of the Haemanthus albiflos are something to take a look at if you get up close and personal with this plant. Well I hope that whetted your appetite for a month as Alba floss, maybe you've got one and you absolutely love it. I'd love to see your photo and to hear about your plant. If you're thinking that you might like to grow this and wondering where you can get hold of seeds. I have only seen seeds on a few websites. One of them being rarepalmseeds.com which is currently out of stock. So not that easy to get hold of the seeds were worth looking for. And possibly you might be able to find a friend with some plants with berries that you could try having a go at raising the seed.

Jane Perrone 19:22
That is all for this week's show. Just a reminder that I'll be back in two weeks. I'm taking a break next week. So back in two weeks, on November the fourth. So wishing you a fabulous fortnight with your Fittonias and ferns, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye!

Jane Perrone 20:00
The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used to Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku, Whistle by Benjamin Banger and Whistling Rufus by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. All racks are licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

If you have a mystery plant you can’t identify, there’s a good chance it is the paintbrush plant aka Haemanthus albiflos. In this episode I discuss this South African plant and how to grow it in your home.

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The flower of Haemanthus albiflos explains its common name of paintbrush. Photograph: Maja Dumat on Flickr.

Check out the notes below as you listen…

• Haemanthus albiflos is native to South Africa, specifically the Cape Provinces and KwaZulu-Natal, flowering late spring to early summer. It can flower at different times as a houseplant.

• You may find it sold under an outdated scientific name, Scadoxus.

• There are 20+ species in the genus Haemanthus and most of them have red flowers and are often called blood flowers. Some species have a dormancy period, but H. albiflos is evergreen. H. katherinae is another species grown as a houseplant, while H. coccineus is known as April fools as it flowers around April 1.

• Bees and butterflies seem to pollinate this plant but I haven’t found any specific research on the polllination ecology of this species.

• Red berries follow on from the flowers, and apparently smell ‘musty’.

• The traditional medicinal uses of this plant are as a treatment for coughs, and a charm to ward off lightning, according to the CRC World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants.

• The paintbrush plant grows from a bulb, making it a geophyte, and the top part of the bulb is usually visiable above the surface, and is green.

• It grows in shrubby and forest areas, often in rocky soil, and so is not usually located in full sun due to shading from other vegetation. So don’t put it with your desert cacti indoors but give it plenty of light.

• The RHS level classifise this species as hardiness level H2, meaning it can withstand temperatures down to 1-5C (37-41F). So you can grow it outside in climates where freezes don’t occur and it’s a popular landscaping plant in those parts of the world.

• You can see a botanical illustration of Haemanthus albiflos in Loddiges Botanical Cabinet, published 1822.

• This is quite a shallow rooted plant so you can put it in a shallow pot. You can use terracotta or plastic - use the former if you tend to overwater.

• You can use cactus and succulent potting mix or add drainage material (perlite or grit) to houseplant potting mix.

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Thanks to True Leaf Market for sponsoring this week’s show. Download their free cover crop guide here. Get 15% off cover crop seeds at trueleafmarket.com with promo code OTL15. This discount is only available for cover crop seed products. Offer expires end of December 2022. Limit one use per customer.

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Whistle by BenJamin Banger (@benjaminbanger on Insta; website benjaminbanger.com). The ad music is Whistling Rufus by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra.