I AM always fascinated by our indigenous bulbs, those underground dwellers that hide from fire and frost then wake to turn our spring grasslands into a patchwork quilt of colour.
AS I have had limited success growing them in my garden, after acquiring a selection of bulbs at last year’s Home and Garden Show, I decided to keep them away from moles and other bulb eaters by creating a container bulb garden.
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Among the miscellany of magical bulbs I bought were three Ornithogalum saundersiae. Perhaps their common name should have prepared me for their Jack and the Beanstalk act. My giant white chincherinchees took off immediately.
Within days the soft, green sheath-shaped leaves were pushing their way through the soil, to great decorative effect. Not long after that the bud-bearing stems emerged and started reaching skywards, the buds only opening once the stems were holding them nearly a metre and a half aloft. And what pretty flowers they were – bunches of little white stars with black centres, nodding and bowing with the wind.
In her field guide to the Wild Flowers of KwaZulu-Natal, Elsa Pooley tells us that the name, Ornithogalum, is made up of the Greek words meaning ‘bird’ and ‘milk’. There are about 200 species in this genus, 58 of them occurring in South Africa.
The chincerinchee with which most people would be familiar is Ornithogalum thyrsoides, as it is a well-known garden subject and cut flower. Endemic to the Western Cape, it is a popular South African export to Europe.
This proudly South African chincerinchee always reminds me of Harare, where I lived for ten years, and of the fledgling gardening skills I honed by cultivating my first garden there. A wonderfully green-fingered elderly gardener ran a small nursery from her home and whenever I bought seedlings from her I also came home with plenty of free advice.
Knowing I was South African, she once presented me with the gift of a handful of Ornithogalum thyrsoides as a special reminder of my home country. They thrived in my Harare garden for many years and brought me great joy.
Indigenous gardening was so far off the general gardening radar back in those days but it is nice to know that even then, gardeners were starting to appreciate our southern African plants and to foster an awareness of the need to preserve them.
If we garden with plants that should grow naturally where our garden is situated, we negate the risk of introducing plants that just might run amok if let loose in areas where they don’t belong. So many foreign plants introduced to South Africa for ornamental use have developed into alien invasives.
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