I always laugh to myself when I check the "page hits" statistic sheet for all my garden columns. "Naked ladies," which I last wrote about way back in August of 1998, always leads by far! Just this past May, for instance, there were 1,513 hits on my August 1998 column on naked ladies. My next most popular column generated only 115 hits during the month.
Naked ladies -- the flower bulb -- featire tall, curvaceous and rosy pink flowers. They stand out like Twiggy at a Weight Watchers' convention. Technically called Amaryllis belladona and sometimes known as belladonna lilies, they still are most often simply referred to as good ol' naked ladies. If you don't personally know them, I urge you to make their acquaintance as they are one of the most foolproof -- and beautiful -- bulbs we can grow.
The reason for their rather racy common name is obvious once you've set eyes on them. You see, during summer, naked ladies are popping up all over, with their pink, fragrant flowers blooming atop 2-foot-high stalks that just happen to be totally leafless -- "naked," if you will.
The trumpet-like flowers put on a show, having six to 12 flowers to a cluster. Flowers are large, about 3 inches in diameter. While light pink is the most common color, they're also available in red, mauve and white, usually with contrasting yellow throats.
"Where's the leaves?" you might be asking. Well, these hardy bulbs have a strange life cycle. The strap-like, deep green leaves appear in spring and die away long before a single flower blooms. By midsummer in our South County area, the foliage is gone, making way for the naked ladies.
Don't let the delicate pink flowers fool you, though. Naked ladies are tough as nails. The leafless flower stalks appear literally out of nowhere, usually popping through rocky, parched ground in such unusual places as highway median strips or vacant lots.
Ideal drought-resistant plantings, naked ladies will grow in almost any soil with very little care or fuss. They will survive and bloom with no extra water other than what Mother Nature provides. In formal gardens, they're extremely handsome when planted amid low shrubs or grouped in perennial borders, especially if they are surrounded by airy baby's breath or some sort of groundcover to cloak the withered leaves. They're often seen planted with lily of the Nile (agapanthus) or Shasta daisies in order to mask the bareness of the stems.
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