Hi All, Alberto's comments on fertilizer vs. viruses make good sense. It would apply to builbs grown oputdoors, but how about those inside a greenhouse? I do not know whether latent virus infection has ever been demonstrated in plants, but it is a very well-studied condition in bacteria. It occurs when the virus genome is inserted into a host cell chromosome. It then just sits there, latent, until some external condition causes the virus genes to be expressed. It is clear that some Nerine, at least the broadleaf varieties, do get viral infections at times. It would be worth someone's time to study the phenomenon in Nerine sarniensis and its hybrids, as well as in N. bowdenii. I'll look into getting a small pilot study done somewhere. We could buy bulbs of Nerine bowdenii, but would someone be able to supply some healthy bulbs of N. sarniensis or its hybrids for such a study? Regards, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) At 07:26 PM 11/6/2005 -0800, you wrote: >At 7:39 PM -0500 11/5/05, J.E. Shields wrote: > >Arnold, we heard it from Sir Peter Smithers in the old [BULB] list. Sir > >Peter has said that he is convinced that feeding any of the broad-leaf > >Nerine varieties releases latent viruses, which can decimate a collection. > >**Interesting. I don't know how fertilizing can 'release latent viruses'. >........ >-- >susan ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA