Pineapple lilies

South Africa has a lot of lovely native bulbs and this is one of them. Eucomis bicolor is a fairly hardy bulb that does well with us at Arduaine unless I put a spade through them when they're dormant, of course, as I did last winter.

They can be propagated by taking off a leaf, holding it point upwards and slicing it into sections. Stand the sections upright in moist compost and cover with a plastic bag and a row of little bulblets will form along the cut edge! Magic. Make sure the top is upwards. What is not commonly known is that if you chop the pineapple top off you can root that in the same way. Before you know it you'll have hundreds of them!