Miniature Fukurin Clivia

Below is a photo of my smallest Fukurin. It is grown from seed harvested from a Zhu Jifu plant. Over the past 10 years that I have been growing Zhu Jifu broad leaves I noticed that a small % of the seedlings are dwarfs and/or miniatures. This is due to the dwarf gene found in many of Mr Zhu's plants when he developed miniatures from his short leaf variegated plants.  It is not as small as my mini clivia miniature. The flower next to it is larger than an average size clivia. The other photo is of a super miniata seedling. It's second leaf is almost 5cm wide. From the looks of it, it looks like it will also develop in a type of miniature. Its background is Heng Lan.

  

Clivia mini miniature - smallest of all clivia

Below are photos of my smallest clivia. It is so small that I only discovered it after 3 years in one of my shade houses. As you can see from the photos below, it is less than 4cm from leaf tip to leaf tip. It already has a type of base and is very slow growing. The leaves are thick and deformed. It will probably never flower, but might make offsets one day. That is if a leaf eating insect like a worm or locust does not discover it, because it can make a meal of it and finishes it off within a few hours. I photographed it with a normal size clivia flower so that you can form an idea how small it really is. I also compare it with the width of a clivia chart if you have one.
 

Different types of Chinese Clivia

Below are a few selected slides from a presentation I gave at the Cape Town Clivia Club. The last slide is a photo of the world's largest clivia in Changchun which is the clivia capitol of the world. The aim is to give you a background of Chinese clivia and how they were developed, sometimes under extreme difficult conditions and circumstances. Through careful observation and selection new types were bred and developed which has become very sought after by collectors from all over the world. I was very fortunate to meet most of the breeders who developed the different Chinese clivia varieties. Many of them shared their knowledge how to select quality plants and I hope to tell you more of these visits and the breeders I have met in future posts. My first visit was in 2004 and every subsequent visit I learned and saw something new.