Dear All, I am sorry to be a little late with this introduction for the topic of the week, but I had company this weekend. This topic finishes the discussion of the three genera in the Brodiaea complex. We first talked about Triteleia, then Dichelostemma, and now Brodiaea. Most of the species of these three are native to California and some of the species are found farther north and south. I started wanting to know more about them a number of years ago when I was struggling with the keys in a number of my books and trying to figure out how to tell them apart. I thought if I did my own key perhaps I could finally understand them. That has helped and there are now some species that come really easily for me, but others are still a challenge. Since I tend to be really long winded as you all have noticed I have decided to take a page from Uli's book when a number of years ago he introduced Hippeastrum species on another forum for me. Instead of writing a very long introduction he wrote something shorter every day. So here is the first part: Brodiaea is a genus with sixteen species including four with two subspecies each restricted to western North America, ranging geographically from Vancouver, B.C. to Baja California. Brodiaea plants are produced annually from a corm that also produces 2 to 15 adjacent offset cormlets in the axils of old leaf bases. Cormlets produce fleshy contractile roots that disperse the cormlets away from the parent. Once they are adult sized the production of contractile roots cease. Leaves are basal, generally 3-5, narrow and grassy, made more so by their inrolled margins. The flowers are upfacing, often richly colored and waxy. Flowers have six tepals that are united at the base in a bell- to funnel-shaped tube in two petal-like whorls with the inner whorl wider. The segments of the tube often have purple stripes. Flower color is blue, purple, pink, or white. Sterile stamens, known as staminodes, are often petal-like and lighter colored than the outer tepals and alternate with three, usually smaller fertile stamens and are distinctive in each species. Flowers of Brodiaea are self-incompatible being pollinated by many different pollinators (bee flies, butterflies, flower beetles, and sweat bees.) Brodiaea is differentiated from Dichelostemma by a flowering stem that is generally straight not curved or twisted, an umbel that is typically open, not dense, and the presence of three sterile stamens instead of crown-like appendages to the filaments that form a tube outside the anthers. Brodiaea is differentiated from Triteleia by having only three fertile stamens instead of 6. This genus has been considered to be a part of many different families (Amaryllidaceae, Alliaceae, Liliaceae). Recent work is now placing it in a new family, Themidaceae, which includes other California genera (Androstephium, Bloomeria, Dichelostemma, Muilla, and Triteleia.) In later posts I will discuss how I grow them, species commonly in cultivation, other species and where they are from, and clues for telling them apart. In the meantime everyone else is free to chime in and I can prune my offerings if it has already been covered. Mary Sue