Waiting for someone to post some new pix of their Achiminee's this year. The top pix was last year, this came from two rhizomes of a NOID that has been in my family over 40 years. I fondly call her Aunt Elsie after my Great Aunt who gave them to me years ago calling them 'Widows Tears' The second pix is the same kind of plants this year in a hanging basket.

hi i had a go at growing these plants this year i live in north west england kept them in the greenhouse they did fairly well and flowered but very small i keeping the bulbs i think that right? i will try again next year, the colours where very pretty. Whats the best way to grow them maybe more heat? I did have more sucess with begonia cane all flowered and rex's do you grow these as well my 1st year in trying all of them got them as little plugs. i got time now i am retired now from work
your plant lovely lots of flowers

We'll, I don't know if more heat is the answer. I'm still struggling with them myself. This one pictured is an old NOID that has been in my family over 40 years. I fondly call her Aunt Elsie after my Great Aunt who gave me my start of her so many years ago. I have lots of trouble with the new ones. Lose most if the new ones that I buy and try to grow. Have no idea what I'm doing wrong. AE grows & multiplies like a weed, these new ones, if I can even get them to come up at all, just wither and die.

I have had good luck with Fem Fatale, here is her pix, she is strutting today .

hi love the colour, my plants have stopped flowering will have a go next yr england not very warm really need greenhouse
i have better luck with a lipstick plant get them in red or orange they have long tube like flowers hope you like [url=photohttp://garden.org/i/s/smily.gif]photohttp://garden.org/i/s/smi...[/url]

Donna, those are really gorgeous, I especially love that vivid red one! I've grown a few Cupid's Bow (Achimenes) over the years but I'm so bad with plants like Achimenes that go dormant. I always forget what's what and when I see an empty pot I just assume the plant in there died and I dump the soil. One year I didn't realize a pot of soil had Achimenes rhizomes in it and I dumped it over the deck railing .... the next spring I found Achimenes growing and blooming in the area where I'd emptied the pot.

rosieann99, that is a pretty lipstick plant you have there!

Looks so pretty Donna!
Janet these do like a high night time temp, so if you live somewhere that gets cold at night (like myself, here in Seattle) they do better indoors until it is mid summer

Before Hurricane Matthew blew through we took all of my many outdoor container plants to the wooded area around the perimeter of our property and tipped them over on their sides. When we were moving them all back to their regular locations I found Achimenes blooming beneath a Hibiscus in one of the containers.

Lin hope you didn't have too much damage - and what a great find! Looks so pretty!!

Thanks Greg!

The Hurricane didn't cause us any damage at all. Our county had $14.5 Billion in damages but that is low compared to some other cities and states. I feel so sorry for those in the Carolina's with the awful flooding. We didn't even get as much rain as was predicted here. We had the generator at the ready and all supplies etc. at hand and although thousands of homes and businesses lost power, we just had flickering lights but never lost electricity ... which was amazing! It's always a weird feeling being shuttered up, not being able to see what's going on outside and hearing things banging and hitting the house. We were so fortunate that storm didn't come just a tad farther west over land! It hugged the coastline on it's trek north along Florida! Some reports stated if it had tracked just a bit farther west that some cities in Florida would have been totally wiped out. We ended up with only Category 1 winds here, big oak tree and maple branches down and tons of twigs and leaves. The entire north side of our house and screened pool enclosure were plastered with leaves, it was so funny looking and I wish I'd remembered to take a picture! We went to dinner over on the intracoastal a couple of days ago and the debris piles are pretty high at curbside waiting to be picked up and we saw a couple of small boats sunk and while sitting in the restaurant we looked out at a little island (uninhabited, just a sand spit in the waterway) to see a 42 foot or so yacht up on dry land! Apparently it had not been tied at dock securely enough or else the winds off the water were just too much and ripped it loose from it's moorings; whoever owns that beauty is going to have a big expense trying to get it back into the water.

That Achimenes is one I've had for quite a few years .... it disappears and I forget about it and then suddenly it shows those pretty blooms and I find it again.

Lin so funny and interesting stories!! Glad you were ok!! I do feel for the people in the Carolinas that were effected. Here in Seattle we had all these news reports of a bad storm coming - 2 actually separated by a day or so. But luckily when the weather front hit the land instead of dispersing like it normally would, which would have cause lots of heavy storm activity, it stayed in a tight band and caused really bad conditions for a much smaller area, which is good for all of us outside that area and terrible for the people in the storms path.
Anyway I also hope people are ok with the storms!
I love that with plants that die back and suddenly they are there again! I have one that I can't remember the name, it dies back after blooming but very often reseeds itself and I'll stumble upon it in another place in the yard!