Description
This is yet another rare and little seen endemic of Texas, USA limited to a small area on the coastal plain in the Brownsville area, as well as a small outlying colony in Cameron County, at the southern tip of Texas. It is however very limited and some authors have expressed the opinion that it is perhaps on the way to extinction in the wild. In cultivation it is very obliging however, growing, flowering and increasing very well.
This species, with narrow, channeled foliage, opens in the day and has medium-sized, bright yellow flowers but with no discernible fragrance. This is remarkable in a way as 50% of its genetic makeup is from the fragrant Z. chlorosolen (in comparison Z. jonesii, which has only 25% of its original genetic makeup from the fragrant Z. chlorosolen, has fragrance).
This has a very long flowering period, from June to October here and in warmer climates than ours it is virtually ever-blooming. In addition it can make several scapes from each bulbs at a time and some of these have two flowers per scape if the parent bulb is of a good size. The flowers are 20-25mm long and freely produced. To top off the excellent performance of a very good rainlily, this is very fertile, comes true from seed and it makes a few offsets regularly. Culture is as for the other species and this has no foibles.
This plant has discernible hybrid origins in the recent past but it is now a valid and stable species in its own right (this is the way that the European Bison came into being)! Detailed studies by Flagg and Flory (in the 1976 Amaryllis year book), demonstrate that it is a stabilised species resulting from an ancestral cross between two other species which still exist and which overlap slightly in their distribution. One of these is the yellow, day-blooming Z. pulchella, the other is the fragrant, evening- and night-blooming , white Z. chlorosolen. The astute will recognise this as the same ancestral parentage which produced Z. jonesii, however in the case of Z. smallii the white parent, has a different ploidy level. The Z. pulchella parent is diploid, having 2n=48 whilst the Z. chlorosolen parent on this occasion, has 2n=60. One confirmation of the parentage, is that Z smallii has 2n=54, exactly half way between the putative parents.
