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Cup of Gold Chalice Vine Solandra Maxima Cuttings
Packet containing 2x unrooted cuttings of this amazingly beautiful and easy to grow plant!
It produces large balloon type flowers on mass a bit bigger than my fist, and then later that night these unfurl and open into huge glossy yellow flowers.
They look spectacular and almost plastic the following morning, and as the day goes on the flowers get a truly golden metallic sheen to them.
They look like gold foil cups a bit smaller than your head by mid afternoon, and they have a mild coconut and syrup aroma.
Breathtakingly beautiful, and super easy to grow, despite being relatively uncommon.
I am told they produce white fruit that later ripen to yellow and finally red, but despite a heck of a lot of searching I have never found anyone that has seed set here in Australia?
Overseas back in the day these fruit and even the flowers were once used in the traditional medicines of central Mexico and northern Central America where it was know as tree of the wind, kieli or kieri.
It was used only in black magic and considered an evil plant, mostly used to induce a trace or for divination and to a lesser extent as an aphrodisiac.
Much the same way as Datura and Angel’s trumpets were with very similar effects.
Now I don’t recommend any of that, and none of it is edible, but as an ornamental it’s a real beauty!
What you are buying from me is 2 small unrooted cutting, and to grow them all you do is get some nice well draining soil or potting mix, and shove the bottom half of the cuttings in the soil like the picture.
Fast forward a month and it will be sending out roots, in another month it will be sending up new shoots, and a year later it will be a large healthy bush, covered in flowers!
It’s very drought hardy, it didn’t seem to be effected by flooding despite being underwater for a couple weeks a few different times now.
The bees and butterflies love it and the finches and willy wag tails set up camp in the branches.
In my experience it does not produce seeds or fruit ever, despite crossing out with unrelated parent plants from all over OZ, and hand pollinating at all times of the day and night for many months on end.
The bees hammer it daily, yet I have never fruit or seed set.
No idea why, but despite this inability to travel, it is still considered a weed by some folks further south.
It starts off as a bush about 1m-2m round, but if you don’t give it a yearly trim is sends up long climbing branches. These can just be snipped off and used to start new plants.
Technically its considered a vine but once large to my eye its growth is more like a dragonfruit or cacti, except without and thorns or spikes.
That’s about it I guess?
Another beauty for the collection.
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems, no nasties, no problems!!!
