Kniphofia

Red-hot pokers have got themselves a bad name. This may be the fault of Professor Kniphof, the German botanist in whose honour they became known as kniphofia. These plants of the lily family, natives of South Africa, used to be called tritoma.

They have had a consistently bad press. Shirley Hibberd, the Victorian garden writer, thought pokers were vulgar and that their use required "a little extra care to avoid a violation of good taste". One can see why (and if you cannot, you are probably too young or innocent for me to explain in a "tasteful" manner).

Resistance to the whole idea of red-hot pokers dies hard - perhaps because few have ever seen their elegant, modern forms.

I had harboured a vague hankering to have such plants in my own garden since I was about 3 years old, when I used to see magnificent specimens in public gardens in Lytham-St.Annes, where we lived at the time, and where my mama used to take me on healthy walks.....

I showed some pokers from these plants just over a year ago, on 13 June 2012.
I explained then that we had tried unsuccessfully to grow them before, but bought some roots from a "pound shop" of all places. Nothing much happened for a couple of years, and we thought that the plants were duds, but last year we got red pokers! This year, much foliage grew, but until this week no pokers. We thought that the cold of last winter had done the plants a serious damage. But then nature's magic (and determination to survive) won out, and we have what you see, with possibly more beginning to poke through.