Ah! Such controversy... and all of it over a beautiful lady, Belladonna. Is she Amaryllis or rather Hippeastrum? Two and a half centuries of confusion ever since Carolus Linnaeus (1737) invented the name Amaryllis, both for the African and the American species. Countless botanical taxonomists weighed in on the matter down through those centuries. In 1987 the XIV International Botanical Congress meeting at Berlin decided to officially give the American species the name Hippeastrum, although most people and usually florists commonly continue to use the name 'Amaryllis'. Botanical Gardens such as the Hortus Botanicus at Leiden, The Netherlands, of course follow the scientific decision and hence this Amaryllis is correctly labeled: Hippeastrum Nagano "Galaxy". But all the visitors I overheard used the word 'Amaryllis', and the exhibition itself is called 'Amaryllis', albeit with a caveat in the fine print about that name.
A typical quarrel, it would seem, about who gets to call her - Sweet Amaryllis - his own, similar to those related by Theocritus (3rd Century BCE) or by Vergil or John Milton or the madrigal composer John Wilbye (1574-1638). She will have nothing of it and remains her beautiful self! She's Hippeastrum, the Knight's Star; the knight is dazzled by her beauty but can never touch her. Or she's Sweet Amaryllis - Sweet Bitterness (= amaro); and isn't death-inducing belladonna bitter, too? - for the lover disappointed.
Whatever the case, this Nagano is a true beauty, and look at the smattering of pollen on her lower lip.
