JOHANNESBURG – Much has originated in Mexico: guacamole, mariachi bands, Frida Kahlo, chocolate, Carlos Santana, tequila… But it’s the Tigridia, Mexico and South America’s sacred Aztec lily, that might be the most short-lived of them all. Although its 30 species have spanned centuries as far back as the Aztecs, who used the bulbs as an edible source of tasty nutrition and sought T. pavonia to cure infertility, these showy flowers have never lasted long at all. Part of the Iridaceae family, Tigridia is also known as the one-day lily, a clue to its extremely short life span. Blink, and you might miss this one – although it does offer various opportunities to re-witness its delicate, orchid-like petals when a new flower emerges shortly after the previous one dies. But each bloom only ever lasts a day, making every day of flowering a unique sight to behold.
Luckily these plants are easy to grow, allowing you to have many stems out at once so that there’s more opportunity for your garden to experience these gorgeously bright petals on a daily basis during its flowering season from December to February, during which time each stem flowers successively for over six weeks. Its colours range from bright red, yellow and pink, to purple, orange, salmon and white, and each bloom is arranged with three large, solid-coloured outer petals with three smaller inner petals forming a delicate cup in the centre. These smaller petals, along with the base of the bigger petals, are spotted with colour, which caused early Spanish botanists to name it after the Latin word for tiger, tigris, when they confused the striped tiger with the spotted jaguar. Growing up to 10cm in size, these flowers are produced on 70cm stems with sparse foliage – leaves are pleated to resemble a broad fan (very similar to those of Gladiolus).
Although these bulbs can still be eaten nowadays as they were by the Aztecs – generally roasted – this should only be done after a full season of growing them organically, so as to ensure you have gotten rid of any chemicals that may have been used on them originally.
Always plant your bulbs in full sun in the months of September and October and, although Tigridia is not too fussy when it comes to soil, make sure it is planted in well-draining, composted soil, with each bulb sitting 5cm below ground level, and spaced 10cm away from the next bulb. Despite it being a hardy plant, the bulbs will rot if there is not sufficient drainage, as you will be expected to water Tigridia very deeply all the way until the onset of dormancy in late autumn if you want successful blooming the following summer. An alternative to leaving these bulbs in the ground is to propagate from seeds collected in late summer, or from offsets separated from the main bulb if lifting these bulbs during dormancy. But take note that plants growing from seeds will only bloom in the second summer after sowing.
Tigridia, here today, gone tomorrow, is proof that sometimes a day is all it takes to make a beautiful difference in this world.
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