Haemanthus amarylloides

Haemanthus amarylloides Jacq. is an endemic South African bulbous plant. It was first described in 1804 by Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin from specimens sent to the Schönbrunn Palace gardens by the collectors Boos and Scholl. Franz Boos was an Austrian botanist who, with Franz Bredemeyer, made up Emperor Joseph II's gardening team. Boos and his assistant Georg Scholl, were collecting Cape plants for the imperial gardens. These collections were transported to Vienna by Nicolas Thomas Baudin, who had been carefully briefed by Boos on the techniques used for keeping plants and animals alive on long ship voyages. It belongs to the family Amaryllidaceae (subfamily Amaryllidoideae) and its specific name shows that Jacquin felt it resembled an Amaryllis. H. amarylloides is usually found in seasonally-inundated hollows at about 600 m elevation, between Springbok and Grootvlei in Namaqualand, and along the Bokkeveld Mountains escarpment to Gifberg near Vanrhynsdorp. It has a cone-shaped infloresce......read more on Wikipedia.