Crocosmia Carmine Brillant - Montbretia

The Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora 'Carmine Brillant' is one of the most floriferous montbretia plants. Throughout the summer, each floral stem bears up to 100 flowers resembling small apricot-orange lilies, touched with strokes of carmine red around a yellow base. Through its bulb, this perennial plant is not very hardy but easy to grow as an annual in sunny, moist soil. Its flowers are beautiful in flowerbeds, of course, but also in planters or as cut flowers.

The Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora is a herbaceous perennial plant with corms, originally from South Africa, from the family Iridaceae, obtained in France around 1880. It shows many similarities with the gladiolus.

The 'Carmine Brillant' variety forms in spring a clump of basal leaves, flexible, 50 cm (20in) tall, and produces from July a curved stem 60 to 80 cm (24 to 32in) high, bearing a horizontally branched spike, with nearly 100 red-orange buds, which open into flowers about 4 cm (2in) in diameter, orange-apricot in colour, with small red marks. They are composed of 3 inner petals and 3 outer petals. The dark green leaves are sword-shaped. Their surface is plicate and strongly veined, and they spread out in a fan or dense cluster from the base of the plant. Their storage organ is a corm, an underground pseudo-bulb that looks like a bulb but is formed from a swollen stem surrounded by scales.

Half-bulb, half-shrub Montbretia plants are symbols of summer. Easy to grow, vigorous, and not demanding, they are planted in fertile and moist soil in the sun. Their bright colours, yellow, orange or red, form cheerful garden spots. They are splendid when combined with annuals or bushes and are well-suited for natural gardens mixed with perennials or grasses. When they thrive in open ground, in sunny exposure and well-drained soil, they multiply over the years and become more beautiful each year. They are also excellent plants for your flower bouquets.