GLORIOUS GLORIOSA

 

Hello all,

Recent, consistently warm weather caused my gloriosa lilies to flower prolifically. In fact, they went berserk! The problem is that there are so many, it's hard to use all of them in ikebana but I gave it a darn good try. It's important to cut the flowers, so that more will come later and, because we have no classes, I can't share them with students. I can't share them with family either because we are self isolating, as we are close contacts with someone who tested positive to covid. Fortunately, our first test came back negative but we need to have a second one before we're out of the woods.

In the wall arrangement, above, I used umbrella grass stems to create a structure of surfaces using lines. Because of their short stems, I used the gloriosa lilies as a mass.

The next arrangement is one I made last week in which I featured my dark purple agapanthus. The structure took some time and effort to create and I didn't want to dismantle it after just one week, so I replaced the spent agapanthus with gloriosas.

The next one came about because one of the flowers had broken away without a stem and, not wanting to throw it away, I placed it inside this lopsided, glass container. It looked a bit lonely on its own, so I gave it a companion - the wine decanter and another gloriosa lily.

The flowers on some of my curved agapanthus had died but their stems were still useable and, together with an old, dry, coloured stem, I made the next arrangement. The gloriosas are there as the floral accent.

The down side to these delightful flowers is their short stems. There are ways, however, to overcome this problem in certain situations. In the next arrangement, in order to sit the flowers higher than they would reach, if in water, I adopted a method used by Ikenobo demonstrator from Indonesia, Andy Djati Utomo. He had attached a florists' water vial to a stick so that he could elevate some beautiful orchids with short stems. I did this for one of the flowers and, for the other, I used an old, narrow eye dropper, that I've had lying around for years. Please don't ask me where I got it from, as I don't remember. Of course, we can only use these methods when we can successfully conceal them.

And here's the arrangement using variegated sansevieria with the gloriosas.

I haven't used any of the gloriosa leaves, even though they are quite beautiful in themselves. That's because I would have to cut some side shoots, which would eventually bring buds and I don't want to sacrifice those future flowers. I thought, however, that you would be interested to see the delightful 'hook' that's at the end of each leaf. This is the way this creeper supports itself against whichever host it finds. The leaves, mostly, attach to other leaves using this 'hook', which is remarkably strong for something that looks so delicate.

Bye for now,

Emily