Crinum Bradley

Crinum Bradley

‘Bradley’ is a great plant for the garden.  It flowers several times each season with 8-12 large flowers on each stalk; it produces offsets after a few years of growth, so you can share it with friends.  However, it has not set seeds for Marcelle, but it is durable and trouble-free.  Sometimes the leaves die back, but then they emerge only to produce more fragrant blooms. 

The flower stalk is tall, at least 20 inches and often 24-26 inches.  The scape does not need staking because ‘Bradley’ proudly holds up wine-red (or wine-pink) flowers that are mostly unmatched in color by any other hybrid (certainly none so popular).  It is an Australian hybrid created by H.B. Bradley that might have resulted from a cross between C. scabrum and C. flaccidum (the color form of the C. flaccidum parent is unknown). 

Flowering-sized bulbs are reportedly hardy to 5 degrees F (-15 C) if provided with good drainage, mulched, and given a sunny location.