Hi all~
Well...KUDOS to you patti for getting three blooms!!! Isn't it a wonderful thing? Nice to have more blooms on this quickly finished plant. And from a new bulb too!
Papilios can be a little slow to start when you first receive them, if they have been harvested and stored. The way they come from Holland, for example.
This is because H. papilio is a species from the rain-forest mountains of coastal Brazil and it is truly an evergreen. It gets watered year-round, either from actual rainfall or from the condensation that collects on the trees by night and falls thereafter.
So, if they are too dry in summer's heat, they will go dormant to survive and they hate that, ;-) One good thing about them going on the dry side in mid-late summer is that it can often spur an early fall bloom if they go back to being well-irrigated after that.
I've heard some say that those new bulbs seem to need to become established before blooming. That seems to be the case quite often. They will need to be planted and started as soon as available in the fall (again I'm talking about new imported or dried off bulbs) so that they are taking in moisture in advance of the December-January (here anyway) bloom period.
Has anyone planted a new papilio after January and had it bloom?
Another point is that it may take a year or more of growing to make that first scape appear. That might be from the drying and storing cycle as well. It might also be an issue with sizing up a bit from the size that is generally available.
Of course, YMMV, both from your local conditions and the quality of the bulb you have.
About the flowers passing so quickly: My last scape began opening on a Wednesday night, well after dark. (Hippis do a lot of work in the night!) By morning they had opened out and continued to open and fill out and by Saturday seemed to be at their best. They continued to look great into Sunday, but by Monday, I could see that the color had begun to change from that nice bright burgundy to the muddy purple color. The tepals also showed the translucent quality that comes with fading.
So, that's just five days of show. Enjoy 'em while you can!
BTW, the pistil wasn't fully opened until Monday (but might have been "ready" for pollination late Sunday-- I just didn't check that closely-- but it was fully ripened even as the tepals began to fade. I crossed it with 'Evergreen' (Thanks MM!) and am hoping that my estimation of Monday being the best day and not too late.
R.
