More red trumpets!
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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Digging Deeper
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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
The oxblood lilies look so beautiful against the backdrop of the blue pot, Pam!
The blue shows them off well, and so does chartreuse. I’d love to have them in the lawnette of sedge in my front garden, but the deer eat them, so I have to squeeze them in the back as best I can. 🙂
They make a dramatic statement. It looks as though you have a red and purple Cuphea planted nearby in the first shot – a perfect pairing!
Yes, that’s a bat-faced cuphea (C. llavea), Kris. It does play well with the lilies.
The lilies are beautiful and amazing against the backdrop. But I love the cactus in the last photo. Do you know what type it is? Thank you.
Yes, it’s called peanut cactus.