The generic name Amaryllis applies to bulbs from South Africa, usually grown outdoors. Each year with the loss of daylight and so much time spent inside the house I find myself picking up a few amaryllis kits usually found in grocery or large discount stores. The choice in the stores where I live is generally limited to red, pink or white, which are lovely, but this year for something a little different, I ordered some unusual varieties from a bulb company. I like to plant three of the same bulb variety in a large terra cotta pot, that way you can have flowering going on for weeks and weeks as the bulbs tend not to bloom simultaneously. They take about 8-10 weeks to flower once you pot them up. So far the pot of Amaryllis Faro has been going on for 5 weeks with a lot of flowers still to come.
Single Amaryllis Faro
The Cybister Amaryllis Evergreen has more of a daylily- shaped flower and the delicate greenish white petals really glow and brighten up the darkest room. I have kept these in a room that stays quite cool and these flowers have also lasted for weeks. They often need to be supported with sticks and string once they start flowering as they get quite leggy. Next year I am going to stagger planting the pots of bulbs so I have a pot in bloom throughout winter.
Cybister Amaryllis Evergreen
Cybister Amaryllis Emerald
Rooting for Ideas 
Hi again—the Cybister hippeastrum is interesting; don’t think I’ve seen one before. South Africa has the most amazing flora on the planet. I was lucky enough to visit the botanical garden in Capetown, which is as close to visiting Eden as I ever expect to get—there was a Cycad Dell, and if Adam and Eve had come walking out of it I wouldn’t have blinked.
D.
Lucky you- That is on my wish list of places to visit! The wines not bad either!
Yes, the wine is fine. This trip was my introduction to it, and I did go to a beautiful old winery outside of Capetown, with a pretty little formal garden. And a wildflower reserve, where you could walk out on the veldt and see what was blooming, then come back to a wonderful studio where one of the two women who ran the place spent her days doing watercolors of whatever was flowering at the time. Seemed idyllic. Have photographs, and may be able to retrieve the names of these places if I tried. (It was more than ten years ago.) Didn’t see anything of SA beyond Capetown and environs; spent most of my time in Namibia.
D.