Dear Alan & all, I looked at the collections page on your web site: http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/holdings.html As expected in an agricultural site it appears a lot of the holdings are crops. It doesn't look like there are a lot of bulbs. Allium, as a source of food, makes sense. Would the emphasis be on collecting ones that were eaten? Looking through some of the species held at Pullman with a quick browse I saw they they are not holding many of the Pacific northwest species I grow. What do you mean by this statement? >The distribution system is not sufficiently peopled to handle lot's of >hobbyist requests, but genuine research requests and grower requests are >taken seriously. Does it mean that if someone wants to do research on a particular genus or species that they can request material and receive it? What is the difference between a hobbyist and a grower? I'm not planning on requesting anything. I am just curious. We have a number of members of this list who are National Plant Collection holders in the UK. We visited a couple of them on our trip. Dave Fenwick holds Crocosmia (including Chasmanthe) and Tulbaghia and he has recently been approved to add Amaryllis, x Amarygia, x Amarine and x Amarcrinum. I may be leaving out others he has. It was so interesting to meet him and see how he grows things. Unfortunately early May is not the time to go to see his plants as only a couple were in bloom, but as some of you who have been reading my notes over the years know I really love getting to meet the people just as much as seeing the plants. One of the things that most intrigued me at Dave's was the greenhouse he had created on one of his holdings. He had built and designed it out of mostly recycled materials and it works really well for him. When he has time maybe he will tells us about it. Bob took a picture of it from the inside. If people are interested I could add it to the wiki. I think Australia has a collections program too and some of our members may be holders. All this discussion has made me think of a topic of the week that we could do. Since I am having a little trouble filling the slots you may see it appear soon one of these weeks. I think it would be very helpful to identify people who we associated with a particular genus. I know over the years I have paid attention when someone speaks up about a genus they are especially interested in and then I know whom to contact if I can't figure out a question on my own. So in the next couple of weeks be thinking about whom you associate with a genus and perhaps we can get together a list of resource people when I announce that topic. For instance: Allium -- Mark McDonough Mary Sue