Five-year-old, water-grown amaryllis in bloom and in distress

Leafy, with its flower in a bottle vase, after the unfortunate falling accident

Yesterday morning I entered the kitchen before breakfast to find Leafy lying on the floor with a broken neck.

The entire bulb, with its long stem and single open flower, had fallen off its vase. The stem apparently snapped on  impact.

With sadness, I surveyed the plant, seeing that only a slender thread held flower to stem. I had to separate it, and the untimely cut flower on a too short stem is now in water within a fancy olive oil bottle.

The tall, vacant stem, still rising majestically from the bulb, will need to be cut away to facilitate leaf growth.

Thankfully, the break happened on the stem itself, instead of with one of the flowers. I'm very happy that the flowers were not damaged and  can still be enjoyed.

I do usually cut off the flower right at the base near the bulb's top, but only after both flowers are fully open.

The injury came just three days after the first flower started to open. With that flower fully open, the second bud has grown to almost equal size and it has started to open and likely will be in full bloom before the week ends.

This is the first time in all the year's I've been growing Leafy that the bulb has fallen off the vase. Looking more closely at the stem, I see the remnant of a cut leaf, green with life. Its presence at the base of the flower stem seems to have forced it to grow slightly off center, perhaps distributing weight in a less than ideal manner.

A leaf remnant, not cut close enough to the bulb's top last year, appears to have interfered with the flower stem's growing area within the bulb.This leaf remainder will need to be cleanly sheared off at the bulb's top along with the injured stem. Hopefully, its presence within the bulb won't affect whatever leaves come out.

In the next few weeks, I plan to visit a hydroponics shop I noticed recently on Route 35. Perhaps they will be able to advise on what I might feed Leafy in water. I have a feeling, though, that their interests will more likely be in cultivating a certain water-grown “herb” rather than flowers or food plants. We'll see.

The second flower will likely be open tomorrow and appears to be very different, so I plan to update tomorrow.

Update on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 08:23PM by Kimberly L. Jackson

Both flowers of the 'Double King' amaryllis in full bloom yesterday. The second flower to open (at right) has stamens and anthers while the first does not. This is the first time the bulb has produced a flower with obvious reproductive parts. It's interesting that they are only on one flower. I think this might mean that a male and a female flower are on the same stem? I did not have time to research this or why one flower would produce stamens after all these years.