The naked-lady-lily (Amaryllis belladonna)

Autumn colors at the Botanical Garden of the University of Porto are not just pastel. The Liquidambar's Bosquet is painted pink with the flowers of Amaryllis belladonna, or naked-lady-lily, as it is commonly known. This bulbous herbaceous plant, native to South Africa, has a vegetative cycle quite different from most plants: the first flowers begin to bloom in September and peak in Octo-ber. The leaves begin to appear in late autumn and dry out in early spring, at which point the plant loses all of its aerial parts, spending spring and summer in vegetative dormancy, only to re-sprout at the beginning of the following autumn.