Well lookee here! Zach appeared brandishing this pot from one of our covered houses in amazement. I was equally astonished that Mark could dredge the species name from somewhere in the deep recesses of his memory, loosely connected to his remembering seeing its relative the pamianthe in flower at Jack Goodwin’s and that must have been at least 35 years ago.

This is in fact Paramongaia weberbaueri, native to Peru and Bolivia where it grows in harsh, dry, stony conditions. It looks a bit like a totally over the top daffodil on steroids. That flower is 20cm across and the trumpet is 10cm long. I measured. It must be night-scented because it was very strongly scented first thing this morning but only pleasantly scented later in the day.

It goes so far back here that even Mark, with his elephantine memory when it comes to the source of plants, can’t recall who gave it to him but we have not seen it in flower before. It has been repotted occasionally down the years and we seem to have about 10 plants of it when he will have started with only one. That is enough for me to plant out half of them in the rockery to see it they like our conditions.

We have succeeded with its compatriot bulb, the Worsleya procera as a garden plant; the challenge now is to see if we can succeed with the paramongaia in the garden. This may take time. Ask me in ten or twelve years if we have them flowering in the rockery.