Meet Clive, the flowering clivia.

This is the first time my 1-1/2 year old houseplant, Clive, has bloomed! My husband named him Clive - he likes to name any of my things that he thinks have no useful purpose, and which take up a lot of space (admittedly, Clive does have annoyingly long, strappy leaves.  For the record, hubby also named my body pillow, which I can't sleep without, Fred.)

Clive doesn't look very Christmasy with that brassy orange colour, but at this time of year, when the christmas cactus has finished blooming, I'll take just about anything!  I LOVE flowering house plants (I NEED flowering houseplants!) and this is a plant that I expect to get better with age.  I ordered him from Garden Imports in spring 2010, after someone on GardenRant had been raving about clivias.  

He was worth the wait.

Comments

[J]

I'm glad you finally got your clivia to flower. If kept indoors all year it can be quite difficult but is a matter of withholding water long enough. It is obviously too warm where you keep it since the pedicel did not elongate properly, but that is okay for house kept plants (as long as it doesn't flower in the crown and split it).

If you really want it to flower, put it outside once we have no freezing at night. I am in Calgary and keep mine outside from last frost to first frost and they flower both in the spring and late fall. Our temperatures in the summer get so low at night that it thinks it is flowering season =) The flowers are also much more impressive thanks to being able to keep them in a sunny window during the winter (not intense enough to burn the leaves - if adapted properly) and thanks to the bright summer shade.

Without a proper cold room (with light) in your house, clivia flowering inside during the winter in our climate is not as impressive and achieving regular flowering is infeasible.

[J]

Sorry, I meant peduncle, not pedicel =)

[Calgary Garden Coach]

That is great information, thanks J! It did occur to me to put it outside last summer but I didn't want to have to deal with the bug issue when bringing it back inside in the fall. Sounds like it will be worth the effort.
Cheers,
Janice