About ten years ago, at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (now Festival), I purchased a pot of Freesia laxa from a vendor I don’t remember. I was able to keep the plants alive and blooming for a couple of years. , Eventually, they died out in that pot. But, like a frisky little phoenix, they have risen from myriad other pots in the greenhouse and beyond. It turns out their beautiful seeds jump happily around and sprout and bloom and then seed and die out and so on…

The plants themselves are fine–very iris-y and somewhat floppy in the greenhouse without full sun. The flowers are bright and lovely–a rather noisy scarlet red with some darker markings inside.

After having success the first year, I ordered seeds for the clone “Joan Evans” and grew them to flowering size. Joan Evans was a delicate beauty–gorgeous white flowers with dark markings, but weak growth and none of the rampant reproduction of the straight species.

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Freesia laxa seeds looking for a pot to infiltrate.

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This might be a mid-range seedling between “Joan Evans” and the species.

I had heard that these bulbs are borderline hardy, so I planted a few outside one year, but they disappeared almost immediately and never came back.

My 2020 plans for Fressia laxa is to enjoy the few plants that have sprung up again in the greenhouse this year and try to give them what they need to produce some nice flowers.