Dear Jim, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>From: "J.E. Shields" <jshields104@insightbb.com> I wonder if all Gordon McNeil's plants are lost? His wife still lives on the property in South Africa and still grows clivias. Maybe she has some > of his crinums too?<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Greetings, I have been to visit Margo McNeil a few times. She gave me some of Gordon's Crinum. Initially I was excited about getting them but after they flowered I became convinced that they were all Crinum moorei crosses and that the incompatible pollen stimulated the apomictic process. The "hybrids" I was given all turned out to be small flowered moorei. In fact one is in bloom at the moment. It is a darkish pink with firm petals. There was a beautiful form of C. asiaticum that came from one of the Indian Ocean Islands. It was growing in a glade and was about 1,5 metres in height. I gave her a C. procerum to plant alongside it to hopefully produce some decent hybrids (?). I also recall that Gordon once wrote an article about a Crinum he found on the Zululand Coast (Natal, South Africa). He Idled it as C. ligulatum (I think?) but it was no longer in existence so I could not verify what it was. C. ligulatum should not be found on the African Coast (unless man brought it here). The Clivia are doing fine and Gordon had done some Clivia X Agapanthus and Clivia X Eucharis but I could not detect where the Agapanthus or Eucharis genes were. Dave Lehmiller has also been there a few times (least ways, I think Dave was the American that came to visit soon after Gordon's death?). If memory serves me correctly, he felt that the good species were lost and that mostly moorei remained. Gordon did a lot of work with Cyrtanthus but Margo thought they had all died. There were some clumps of Nerines and I brought some back with me but in the 7 years that I have grown them, they have never bloomed. Regards Greg