Six Feet of Burgundy
Why would you want a bulb like the ‘Queen Emma’? Only because it is one of the most stunning crinums you will ever see.
It is large, bold, and beautiful, and it is the only plant in this library where I’d tell you to ignore the flowers. They’re nice. But it’s the foliage that makes this thing an attraction — thick, broad, dark wine-burgundy leaves fountaining out of a trunk-like neck, running to six feet tall on an established plant. Look at the photo with the person in it. That’s not a trick of the lens.
Nothing else in a southern garden looks like this. It reads as tropical in a way that a banana or an elephant ear reads tropical, except this is a bulb, and it’s a crinum, and it has the constitution that implies.
Warning: This Is a Tropical Bulb
I put that in my store copy in the first three sentences and I’ll put it here too, because it’s the thing most likely to cost you seventy-five dollars.
This is a tropical bulb. It needs to be grown outside along the Gulf Coast, or in a greenhouse. I have seen it grow in Dallas and Atlanta in protected areas — a warm wall, a courtyard, a spot that traps heat — and that’s the ceiling. It is not a plant for a Zone 7 garden with a hopeful gardener and some mulch.
Everything I say elsewhere about crinums being unkillable comes from Crinum bulbispermum, the South African species that carries cold into the hybrids. There is none of it in this plant. Queen Emma sits in the Crinum asiaticum complex — the grand crinum group, out of tropical Asia and the Pacific — and those plants have never seen a hard freeze in their evolutionary lives.
If you’re inland and north, this is a container plant that comes inside. That’s a real option and plenty of people do it. It’s just not a plant-it-and-forget-it option, and this whole genus has a reputation that will lie to you about that if you let it.
The Queen, and What’s Actually Documented
Emma Rooke — Queen Emma, Emma Kaleleonālani, 1836 to 1885 — was queen consort of Kamehameha IV, who ruled Hawaii from 1855 to 1863. She was a genuinely remarkable person: she and her husband founded Honolulu’s Queen’s Hospital, and she spent her life’s work on health care and education for the Hawaiian people. She was also, by all accounts, an avid gardener. All of that is solid.
The connection between that woman and this plant is tradition, not record, and I want to label it honestly.
What you’ll read is that the red-leaved crinum was Queen Emma’s favorite, and that it was named for her on that account. The sources that say so hedge — they say it is “believed to be” her favorite, they refer to “stories” that these lilies were her favorites. I have not found a document from her lifetime, or anything close to it, tying this plant to her. The plant is not native to Hawaii; it came from tropical Asia, like everything else in the asiaticum complex.
So here’s my read. A queen who gardened, on an island where this plant grows magnificently, in a century when it was arriving there — that’s an entirely plausible story, and it may well be true. It is not, as far as I can find, a proven one. It’s the kind of story that gets better every time it’s retold, and I’d rather hand you the sober version and let you enjoy it anyway.
Nobody Knows Which Plant She Liked
The name problem here is worse than the history problem, and it’s the reason this page can’t give you a clean botanical answer.
I sell this as Crinum procerum ‘Splendens’, which is the most common commercial designation. You will also find the identical or near-identical plant sold as Crinum × amabile, as Crinum × augustum, as Crinum asiaticum var. procerum, and as a giant subspecies of C. asiaticum outright. Botanists have argued for a long time about precisely which crinum was the one named for the queen, and they have not finished.
The Pacific Bulb Society lays out why, and it’s worth quoting the shape of it. There is much confusion between C. × amabile, C. × augustum, and the red-pigmented forms of what has been called C. procerum but is part of the asiaticum complex. The red-pigmented procerum forms are numerous. Some carry clone names — ‘Splendens’, ‘Kaaawanum’, ‘Big Red’ — but since they’re all fertile, it’s hard to know whether you have an asexual clone or somebody’s seedling, and many unnamed forms are in circulation. And on the name itself, the Society’s own writer says flatly: the name “Queen Emma lily” is strongly connected to C. × amabile, but the red forms of procerum are commonly called that now, and I know not enough to say to which form this name originally applied.
That is the most honest sentence written about this plant, and it comes from the best source there is.
What I can tell you with confidence is what’s in the pot. It’s the big red-leaved one. It’s the plant everybody means when they say Queen Emma. What its correct name is, I genuinely don’t know, and neither does anyone else — and I’d rather say that than print a Latin binomial with a straight face and let it harden into a fact three citations from now.
Uses in the Landscape
This is architecture, and it should be treated as the single most important object in whatever space it’s in.
You don’t mix a six-foot burgundy fountain into a mixed border. You give it a stage — a courtyard, an entry, the corner of a pool, a spot against a light wall where the wine color has something to argue with. Underplant with green and let the crinum be the only thing with an opinion.
In a container, on a Gulf Coast patio, it’s about as good as a potted plant gets, and the container solves the winter question for everybody inland.
Planting & Care
Zones: Gulf Coast outdoors, or a greenhouse. Protected spots in Dallas and Atlanta have worked. Otherwise, a pot that comes in.
Sun: Full sun brings the burgundy out. The foliage color is a light response.
Soil: Adaptable. It’s a big greedy plant; it won’t refuse good ground.
Depth: The neck stays well above the soil — and on this one the neck is a substantial part of the plant.
Room: Six feet tall and broad to match. Do not put this three feet from a walk.
Shipping: Spring-shipped, March 15 to August 15. Order anytime to reserve.
Why It’s Seventy-Five Dollars
Three honest reasons, and none of them is that it’s fancy.
Our bulbs are large — genuinely large, which is the whole point of the plant and also the first problem. They are tough to ship. And they are slow to grow. Put those together and you have a plant that costs real money to get from my field to your door and takes years of my ground to produce in the first place. That’s the entire pricing story.
Very limited supply. That’s not a technique; it’s a description of what’s out back.
I hope our few bulbs will find a nice new home with someone who will enjoy and appreciate them as much as I do. I mean that in a slightly different way with this plant than with the others. Most of what I sell, I’m handing you something that will look after itself and outlive us both, and my job ends at the mailbox. This one is asking something of you — the right climate, or a pot and a plan and a winter’s worth of attention.
It’ll pay you back. Six feet of wine-red leaves, in Texas, off a bulb. There’s nothing else like it and I’ve been looking for twenty years.
Shop this variety at SouthernBulbs.com