Care Guide from seed: Drimia intricata (=Schizobasis intricata)
Life Cycle: Perennial
USDA Hardiness Zone: Unknown, possibly 10a or 9b
Light Exposure: Full Sun
Soil: Free draining succulent soil, water when dry
Sowing: Surface sow
Germination time: 2 weeks
Time to Flower: ~700 days (~23 months), based on personal plants from sowing
Time to Fruit Maturity: TBD (Will be updated if I can get two to flower at the same time!)
Fruit Maturity Signs: Capsule dries out to brown
Self Pollinating/Fertile: Unknown
Container cultivation: Can stay in small containers for years, very slow growing.
Drimia (formerly Schizobasis) intricata is a small winter-growing African geophyte that is native to a broad range throughout the continent, going all the way down to South Africa. The mature plant comprises a round, marble-like bulb that is brown or dark-green in color depending on light exposure, with a wiry, intricately branched stem that it uses for photosynthesis in place of leaves. When the plants are first born, they send up filiform leaves to photosynthesis with instead of stems. Mine grew their first stems and outgrowing their juvenile leaves after about a year.
I ended up surface sowing these while keeping the medium damp, where the seeds ended up germinating in two weeks with a germination rate. They are fairly slow-growing so you’ll be in for the long haul! Mine are still the size of small marbles as of posting this after about two years since sowing.
I kept them moist for the first month or two of their lives I believe, before I tapered off to once a week.
Their care ended up being very simple, and it seems that they’re even able to handle overwatering better that a lot of other African succulents in my experience, and others growing these seem to also report that they’re pretty bulletproof plants, and I’ve lost very few of them compared to other succulents I’ve grown from seed. If they do get too stressed out though, they seem to go dormant and revert to bare bulbs for a while before seeing if conditions have improved. Like a lot of south African bulbs, they need some exposure to cooler night time temperatures during the winter or they end up declining.
Mostly I just water them once a week when their medium gets dry– which is enough that they don’t get stressed or rot from too much water, but not so little that they think it’s summer and go dormant.
When they reach maturity, the create tiny white blooms at the end of their wiry stems.
