Jim & list, I ran a small experiment this year. I have lycoris in 2 beds which were watered twice a week all summer, and 1 bed which got no supplemental water. It is, of course, very dry here as it is every summer, though NW Arkansas has had a little more rain than you in Kansas City. The first flowers in each bed opened on the same day. The big difference was, over the next week or so, in the number and height of stems. In the watered beds, nearly every bulb flowered, and every stalk was what I think of as the "right" height - 20-30 inches. In the dry bed, perhaps 1 of 3 bulbs flowered, and many of the stalks were dwarfed as you describe, 4-6 inches tall. (There is a 4th bed with lycoris, but it has only excess squamigeras. Being squamigeras, of course, they all flowered and had perfectly normal stems despite the bed being overgrown with grass and receiving no extra water.) Steve On Tue, 19 Aug 2003, James Waddick wrote: > Dear All; > A quick count tallied almost 200 bloom stalks on various > Lycoris, but a disappointment. Many plants that had multiple stalks > last year had only 1 or 2 this year. Others (as reported earlier ) > were very dwarf (4 inches tall instead of 30 inches). Thee comprise > only a few of the early species and hybrids. ... > I just started to water a bed with about 75 bulbs of various > species and stalks have quickly begun to show compared to other beds > of the same species with NO stalks up yet. -- Steve Marak -- samarak@arachne.uark.edu