The Highlight of the Summer
I started off with only a few bulbs of Crinum ‘Rose Parade’.
It did not take long for them to start blooming, and when they did they were the highlight of the entire summer on the farm. The pinks were vibrant, large, and they showed themselves often, on two- to three-foot stalks. If you want striking summer color, this is a must-have.
I’ve walked a lot of crinum rows in June. It takes something to stop me in one.
Where My Bulbs Came From — and Who Made the Plant
Those first few bulbs came to me from Marcelle Sheppard, and I want to be precise about her role, because I’ve been loose about it in the past.
Marcelle Sheppard is the celebrated crinum breeder and grower of East Texas — you can fairly call her the First Lady of Crinums. She made real hybrids of her own that you’ll find in the Pacific Bulb Society’s records under her name: ‘Lady Chameleon’, ‘Lovely Lady’, and others. She’s also the breeder behind ‘Carroll Abbott’, which I sell a few pages over. If you grow crinums in Texas, some part of your garden traces back to her.
But she did not make this one. The record is clear on it: PBS lists Crinum ‘Rose Parade’ as a hybrid of C. ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ × C. moorei made by Barry Clark, and Plant Delights independently gives the same cross and the same breeder. Clark is the man behind ‘Lorraine Clark’ too — another ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ cross, another red that will take your eye off everything else in the bed.
So: Barry Clark made it. Marcelle Sheppard grew it and handed it to me. Both of those are worth saying, and they’re different sentences. In a genus where the breeder is usually a set of initials and a shrug, it costs me nothing to get the credit right.
Ellen’s Children
Notice what keeps happening on these pages.
‘Rose Parade’ is ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ × C. moorei. ‘Elizabeth Traub’ is C. scabrum × ‘Ellen Bosanquet’. ‘Lorraine Clark’ is ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ × C. scabrum. ‘Super Ellen’ and ‘Sunbonnet’ are ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ × C. bulbispermum. ‘Antares’ and ‘Infusion’ are ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ × ‘J.C. Harvey’.
A citrus farmer in Fruitland Park, Florida made one cross around 1915, for his wife, and never wrote down what went into it. A century later, half the good red crinums in America are that plant’s children. Every serious breeder who came after — Traub the taxonomist, Barry Clark, Tom Perry, Alani Davis — went back to Ellen and asked her for more.
‘Rose Parade’ is what you get when you ask her for size. It’s a large, vigorous plant with huge rose-red flowers, and the moorei on the other side is where the scale comes from.
Uses in the Landscape
Two to three feet puts this at the friendly end of the crinum height range — shorter than ‘Mrs. James Hendry’ or ‘Elizabeth Traub’, which means it can go closer to the front of a bed without blocking anything.
Use the color deliberately. Rose-red is a hard, saturated shade and it wants either room or a cool foil — grey and silver foliage sets dark crinum flowers off particularly well, and blue salvia does the same job. Don’t crowd it with more pink.
And skirt the base, like every crinum. The flowers earn their place; the foliage is rent.
Planting & Care
Depth: Tip of the neck at or barely above soil level, in well-drained soil.
Sun: 8+ hours a day. Full summer sun is fine.
Blooms: Summer, on two- to three-foot stalks, repeating.
Shipping: This is a spring-shipped bulb. Our spring-planted bulbs ship in the ideal planting window — March 15 through May 15. Orders placed after May 15 ship the following spring. You may order any time to reserve, though your card is charged at checkout.
Moving: Don’t. Give it a permanent spot and let it get on with it.
Currently Unavailable — and Why
Rose Parade isn’t in stock right now. Email info@southernbulbs.com to get on the waiting list.
The reason is the same reason every good crinum costs what it costs: the bulb decides the schedule, not me. I started with a few. Getting from a few to enough is measured in years, and there is no shortcut, no tissue culture lab, no way to lean on it. Fifty-five dollars is what a decade of patience prices out to.
The upside of a plant that slow is a plant that permanent. Put it in the ground once. It will still be throwing rose-red stalks two feet in the air long after the fence has fallen over — and when it finally makes you some offsets, dig one for somebody, because that is exactly how it got from Barry Clark to Marcelle Sheppard to me to you.
Shop this variety at SouthernBulbs.com