Why nerines are the perfect flower for autumn | House & Garden

Nerine ‘Sparkle’ is a hybrid derived from the more tender N. sarniensis, the original Guernsey Lily. Ideal for growing in a conservatory or glasshouse, the sarniensis hybrids have a wider colour range than the hardier species, and typically their flowers appear before their leaves, on a tall, elegant steam.

It is interesting that one of the earliest paintings of a nerine, dating back to the mid seventeenth century, is today widely available as poster art. The renowned French botanical artist Nicolas Robert (1614-1685) painted a single bloom of Nerine sarniensis (then known as Amaryllis sarniensis) soon after it was first introduced to France. Looking at the image today, the vivid, lipstick-pink flower exploding outward from its stout stem has a modernity that transcends history, and the print could almost be mistaken for a contemporary work. This remarkable painting marks the point at which this distinctive South African bulb arrived in Europe, but despite the exotic appearance of the flower and the interest it generated, its introduction was shrouded in myth and muddle, with much confusion about its origins.

Some botanists concluded quite wrongly that nerines arrived from Japan, while others thought that they came from the Channel Islands, where they had mysteriously appeared and grew prolifically in the wild. Such was the conviction that N. sarniensis was named after the Roman name for Guernsey, Sarnia. Even in the late eighteenth century, some of Britain's most respected botanists were still getting it spectacularly wrong. In his Gardeners Dictionary of 1768, Philip Miller stated that the plant 'was supposed to come originally from Japan, but has been many years cultivated in the gardens of Guernsey and Jersey; in both