I'm curious if anyone can clear up a question of mine regarding Eucomis hybrids and chromosome counts. I just purchased E hyb. 'Leia' at a local plant sale. It looks to be an E. vandermerwei hybrid. I had read an abstract of an article on Eucomis chromosome counts and although I don't have the list it did say that all of the smaller species were diploid while the larger ones such as comosa and pole-evansii etc were tetraploid. I've now seen photos of vandermerwei X comosa and vandermerwei X autumnalis hybrids. So is vandermerwei a diploid? If so are these hybrids sterile triploids? Does anybody grow these and get viable seed set ? These hybrids have much better foliage appeal then the majority of what's common in the US. I'd love to see future developments in this direction. Tim Chapman