Zantedeschia aethiopica, White Calla Lily בת-קלה אתיופית
Family: Araceae | Origin: South Africa
In autumn and early winter at Shtiley Har there hangs a large selection of bags containing bulbs and corms on a large stand not far from the cash registers.
Attached to all of them are colorful and eye-catching pictures of the flowers, which will bloom within a few months from the day of planting, most of which are of small and flowery plants such as anemones, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, etc.
One group of bags contain small, fleshy brown tubers, and those who plant them are in for a completely different experience – shortly after planting, the tubers wake up and instead of putting out small, delicate leaves like the other plants, they grow large, impressive tropical leaves while swelling and splitting on their own.
In the spring, there will also be tall flowering spikes bearing large white flowers with yellow protruding columns in their centers.
White Calla Lily grows in the wild in swampy areas or on the edges of streams and lakes, where it forms large, evergreen clumps with a lush tropical appearance.
The leaves emerging from the ground can reach a height of about a meter and form a clump with a diameter of more than a meter. Flowering can also continue through summer in good conditions.
During prolonged periods of drought, the plant dries out only to re-emerge from the tubers when it senses moisture.
The plant is therefore suitable for a wide variety of conditions: in a medium or large container and in the garden in any soil and in all light conditions from full shade to full sun.
In a pond or in a constantly wet place we will get an evergreen plant, which will be bigger in shady conditions and will bloom in spring and summer.
In a regularly watered garden one can grow a handsome plant, which will completely dry out its leaves for a few months in the summer and will return to revive every year in the fall and bloom in the spring.
In addition to all the these virtues, the flowers and leaves are also excellent for picking and remain beautiful for several weeks in a vase.
White Call Lily is an easy-to-grow and long-lasting plant and you can take advantage of the summer dormancy and thin out the tubers if the clump is too large and even plant them in different places.
During the winter and spring, the nurseries also receive green plants in pots for those who missed the season for planting the dormant corms.
It is interesting to note that its colorful and smaller sisters common in nurseries in recent years are hybrids of several other Zandedeschia species and have the opposite life cycle, i.e. active in summer and dormant in winter.
The Latin genus name, Zantedeschia, honors the memory of an Italian botanist named Giovanni Zantedeschi, while the confusing species name 'Ethiopian' is related to the fact that in ancient times all of Africa south of Egypt and Libya was called Ethiopia.
For the Hebrew article press here