Alstroemeria and Bomarea
Alstroemeria are one of the well-known plants of Peru, and they are surprisingly hardy! They grow easily in Seattle and come back each year. You can grow them out here in most soils without ever having to even water them and they have no problems. They make wonderful flowers that last for a good amount of time and they are favorites of hummingbirds.
They come in almost every imaginable color and you have very tall and compact forms. As such there is great potential for breeding them. The seeds take forever to germinate, but they are the kind of thing that you can set and forget and get a great rate of germination. I am working on mixing the fragrant gene from “Sweet Laura” and “Glory of the Andes” into more colors. I particularly like the reds and purples of the genus.
Bomarea are a wonderful related species that is also from South America. They are not as hardy as Alstroemeria and their roots are much more sensitive to disturbances. They are still beautiful and worth growing, but you can end up with the heartbreak of a zone-pusher if you don’t have them in a pot that you can bring in. Bomarea are also much more difficult to propagate than Alstroemeria, though I hope to help make tissue cultured plants available in the US in the future. I am working on crossing them with each other and with Alstroemeria.
These are the following Bomarea that are available in the USA: