Impala Lillies sure are one of the beauties of the African low-veld - but more so, these plants, have such amazing features and uses, all of which I discussed in depth in a previous post
But other than the fact that these plants have an array of ethnological as well as medicinal uses, they are simply lovely to have in the garden. They are amazingly resilient, and when the rest of the garden is dull and dreary during the winter months, the Impala Lillie takes the stage.
And the best part is, that if you live in an area where they would not acclimatise outdoors, you can still grow these plants indoors, in fact they make absolutely lovely bonsai plants.
So what has happened since my last post on these natural wonders?
Well first of all, after quite a bit of effort, I managed to harvest some Impala Lillie seeds. This was done by covering the seedpods with stalkings while still on the plant. The reason I did this was so that the seeds could naturally mature while attached to the mother plant.
What happens, is that when the seeds pods are ready, they burst open, and the seeds then become airborne, making them extremely hard to gather. So using my method I was able to accumulate quite a bit of seeds. This is important as most seeds will not grow naturally because of agricultural development, and conserving this plant is important for environmental causes.
My hard work had paid off and I was elated at the results, after the seeds had popped open, I managed to collect an entire bucket of the seeds!
After some preparing and reading soil filled bags, I started planting my Impala Lillies, and a few weeks later the first soil broke, and from it emerged tiny little Lillies seemingly reaching for the sun.
I am particularly excited about the amount of seedlings that has come up since then, it looks like this is going to be a good year for the Impala Lilly population. This could also be an indication that we will be having sustainable rainfall this year - and I honestly hope that, that is the case!
