Dear All; A couple related topics: Provenance. This is seemingly little known term, but of utmost importance in regard to hardiness and micro-climates. It simply means 'origin' but more important it refers to the exact location where a plant originated. When you look closely into the origin and distribution of many perennials including bulbs, it is often surprising that all of our plants of a single species in cultivation may come from a single or limited collections from the wild. Often these collections come from the middle of a species' range and do not represent the hardiest or most northern (or southern in Southern hemisphere) population. Ocassionally a plant is introduced from northern regions of its distribution and found to exhibit unexpected increased hardiness. Defoliation/dormancy/evergreen Jamie, Uli and others mention that some Crinum remain evergreen or barely loose foliage in winter in their climate. Here ALL Crinum outdoors loose their foliage every winter*, but all produce new foliage. The fact that some Crinum loose all foliage and others just have damaged foliage suggests the range of hardiness or cold tolerance. I have heard of some gardeners in mild climates who purposely cut foliage and stems at the onset of winter to 'push' plants into moving their metabolism into dormant bud production. Plants that are allowed to remain evergreen or nearly so, may not develop the deep dormancy regarded to increased hardiness. By removing the foliage, the plant goes into full dormancy and increases tolerance to cold. The relationship between dormancy, degree of herbaceous-ness and evergreen-ness all indicate a range of hardiness. I suppose one can envision a plant natural growing in a mild climate, but getting an early hard frost and defoliating quickly. Later hard frosts have little effect. Nearby in a more protected area another plant may just have damaged foliage, but then be more prone to greater damage later in the cold season because it did not go totally dormant early. Which leads to.... Ecology As a totally alternate way of discussing cold hardiness, one might relate known ecology of a plant to its probable cold tolerance; i.e. the more we know about how a plant grows in the wild, the better we might know how it might behave in the garden. (Warning Commercial Plug!) In my recently published book on the genus Paeonia* (peonies) I have avoided the use USDA Zones in favor of discussing the native climate, geography etc. I have rated each species as 'northern', 'temperate' or 'mild', but then given some details about specifics. We often see a situation where a plant has a very restricted range today, but in the past had a much larger distribution and this is reflected by its extended hardiness. A peony example in general regards tree peony species which are almost totally confined to near tropic locations in SE China, yet are perfectly happy growing in northern climates including southern Canada, Scandanavian countries etc. Not what you'd expect from a sub-tropical species. This suggests that the current restricted range reflects some conditions other than cold tolerance - we know they have been dug for medicinal purpose for millennia and continue to have human pressure on them in nature. ____________ What this all means is that there are many variable to growing plants that may not seem obviously hardy. Temperature is just one of a palette of conditions relate to hardiness. Provenance, cultivation techniques and understanding can overcome some of what may seem obvious. Nothing is obvious and instead of curtailing experimentation, should encourage the 'adventurous' gardener to try again. Best Jim W. -- Dr. James W. Waddick 8871 NW Brostrom Rd. Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711 USA Ph. 816-746-1949 E-fax 419-781-8594 Zone 5 Record low -23F Summer 100F +