ALSTROEMERIA x hybrida

Generous herbaceous perennial plant, it has a thick compact and abundant habit and lasting, showy flowering; it is strongly hybridized and native to central-southern America. It is also known by the popular name of “lily of the Incas”. Equipped with underground reserve organs, it has numerous slender erect and unbranched stems to which thin lanceolate leaves of a tender green are applied in an irregular way: overall it has a pillow appearance, growing even 60cm tall and tending to develop in width from year to year. From late spring and throughout summer, large inflorescences continuously appear in the apical parts of the plant, they are composed of numerous flowers which look like lilies: their petals, partly monochrome and partly shaded in different colors, with dark stripes and dots, are generally 6 and make up large corollas that embrace an infinite range of colors, from white to red, from yellow to purple, from pink to orange, etc.

It requires a sunny or at most partially shaded position and, although adapting to various types of soils, it prefers richer ones, as long as they are always well drained. It defends itself very well from coastal areas saltiness, while it does not tolerate well conditions of prolonged drought and it is indeed supported during the vegetative phase by constant wetting.