The One That Shows Up Late
By the middle of July most crinums have had their day. Ellen Bosanquet has done her work in June. The milk and wines are finished. You walk the beds thinking the trumpet flowers are over for the year.
And then this one starts.
‘Summer Nocturne’ doesn’t even begin until July or August, and it runs to frost. Large white trumpets, three to five inches, tipped in a pale pink that darkens as each flower ages, six to ten of them on every dark green spike. The fragrance is lightly sweet and it will knock your socks off — I’ve been accused of overselling that and I’m not going to walk it back.
It is the most overlooked plant I sell. It doesn’t get the recognition it deserves and I’ve never fully understood why. My best guess is the price.
Thad Howard, and a Small Correction to the Word “Heirloom”
This is not an heirloom, and I’m not going to dress it up as one.
‘Summer Nocturne’ is a made plant, made by a man whose name runs through this whole genus: Thad Howard, in Texas, in 1964. Howard wrote Bulbs for Warm Climates, the book more or less everybody in this business works out of, and he spent decades botanizing the Texas and Mexican sides of the border and crossing what he found. The Pacific Bulb Society gives the parentage as Crinum erubescens × Crinum moorei.
Look at what that cross is actually doing. C. erubescens is an American species — Central and South American, related closely enough to our own swamp lily that authorities have called it a form of it. C. moorei is South African, a forest plant from the Natal coast that wants shade and would sooner not be in a Texas August at all. Howard put the New World and the Old World together and got a plant that blooms when the New World summer is at its worst.
The 1964 date is my own copy’s, and I want to flag that it rests on my say-so rather than a document — there’s no crinum registry to check it against. What I can tell you is that 1964 was a working year for Howard; the Pacific Bulb Society dates other crosses of his to it. So the date is plausible and I have no reason to doubt it. I just can’t prove it to you, and I’d rather say so.
Sixty-odd years is not a century. But durability isn’t a matter of age — a plant is not tough because it’s old, it’s old because it’s tough. This one has the second thing.
Why It’s Cheap, and Why That’s Not a Warning
People see the price next to the other crinums and assume something’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong.
The bulbs are simply smaller. That’s the entire explanation. A Summer Nocturne bulb is a fraction of the size of an Ellen Bosanquet bulb, and I price bulbs by what they are. What the small bulb doesn’t mean is a small plant — these still run two to three feet tall. And the small bulbs multiply fast. We photographed a clump in 2025 that was one mother bulb and ten babies. That took a few years, but it happened without help.
So: the cheapest crinum on the list is a Thad Howard hybrid that blooms when nothing else does and doubles itself in the ground. I’ve stopped trying to explain why it doesn’t sell better.
The Best Crinum for a Pot
This is the one I’d put in a container, and it’s the only crinum I say that about.
The small bulb is the reason — it leaves you room for other things. If you know the container rule about thrillers, fillers and spillers, ‘Summer Nocturne’ is your thriller: strappy monocot foliage that pairs with anything you can buy at a garden center in July. The foliage is compact and generally tidy, which is a sentence I cannot write about most of this genus, and it means you can put this plant front and center instead of behind something.
Two things about pots. Bring it in if temperatures drop below 35 degrees. And dig and divide every few years — remember the mother bulb and ten babies. In the ground that’s a bonus. In a pot it’s a crowd.
Planting & Care
Depth: Plant with the top third of the bulb above the ground.
Sun: Full summer sun, eight to ten hours minimum — though this one will take a few hours of shade a day better than most.
Soil: Well drained, or amend the clay. If you have rock and clay, amend it once and then leave the plant alone; it will take care of itself.
Zones: Does well in zone 7, but mulch over the bulb for the winter there.
Water: Little to none once established. It’s widely adapted to whatever soil you have.
Animals: Hummingbirds and bees are all over it. Deer and the rest leave it alone, the way they leave most crinums alone.
Two Sizes
Three bulbs, $15. These are small — genuinely smaller than what we’d call a “small crinum” elsewhere on the site. Three of them for fifteen dollars is the cheapest entry into this genus that exists, and because they multiply quickly, three is a stand in a few years rather than three plants forever. This is the pack for a small area, or for finding out whether you like crinums.
One regular bulb, $12. Golf ball size or thereabouts, which for a Summer Nocturne is a good size — call it the equivalent of a “regular” bulb of any other crinum. One of these will get to blooming and offsetting sooner than the small ones will. If you want the flowers this year rather than the year after next, buy the single.
Planning Ahead
Patience isn’t most people’s strongest quality, mine included. We plant something and we want to see it grow now.
Bulbs don’t work that way, and late summer — right when this plant is blooming — is the ideal time to make peace with that. The garden is tired. Trim the sad and overgrown perennials back and put things in the ground with the clear understanding that it’s for next year, or possibly the year after. Rain lilies, crinums, spider lilies, the spring narcissus. They have time to root and settle, and they’ll sit in the ground six months before their next bloom season, which some of them need.
‘Summer Nocturne’ is a good argument for the whole approach, because it demonstrates the payoff on a short enough timeline to be persuasive. Plant a golf-ball-sized bulb this fall. In a few years you have a clump, and every August, when the rest of the garden has given up and you have too, something white and sweet-smelling comes up anyway.
You’re planting a story. These bulbs are for a lifetime.
Shop this variety at SouthernBulbs.com