Dear All, In January I mentioned an article on Calostemma, an Australian genus, that was written about in the June 2002 issue of Australian plants. In the article and my post I mentioned a number of different color forms that had been seen besides the usual yellow and purple ones that some of us are growing. Paul Tyerman has posted this message to another list. "Back in January we were discussing Calostemma and someone was talking about the fact that there were bicolour forms etc. At the time I expressed surprise at the range of colour that someone mentioned. This morning I visited the National Botanic Gardens here in Canberra as someone told me recently that the Calostemmas were in full flower there. I toddled along this morning and nearly fell over when I saw some of the colours that they had there. I had deliberately taken my camera along as I thought that there might be some here who would be interested in seeing them. One clump they had was creamy yellow and two different shades of bicoloured red/cream. I don't know what started out there but I'm hazarding that there were the red and cream and the yellow ones there, and the cream with red throat was a hybrid between the two. Another clump was the pink with the yellow throat, and further along the path was the dark red one (this one is the same as the one I have I think, although I think it may be a touch lighter in colour). There was even a white one in bud (or at least the buds looked pure white). All I can say is WOW!!!!! I think I'd have to say that the cream with red throat is my favourite. The red is not just in the centre, but at the base of each petal, making the flower creamy yellow with a red glow to the centre of it. Very pretty. I hope these pictures are of interest to some of you. The colours were certainly an eye-opener for me. I have never seen any of these in commerce other than the dark one similar to my own. From memory the yellow that I have is actually a much solider yellow than the creamy-yellow that they have at the Bot Gardens too. Fascinating stuff!! Also, out of interest I sowed a few of the seeds of my own Calostemma last year and they seemed to do OK. They are like Nerines and Belladonnas in that they have a fleshy seed which sends out a radical when sitting on the surface of the ground. I sat the seeds on the surface and they sent down their radicals and eventually sent up some small leaves as well. Nothing above ground on them yet but that is to be expected. Does anyone know how long it takes Calostemmas to reach flowering size from seed? I'm just wondering how long my little dears from last year are going to take to get to maturity. Are they going to be helped along by a bit of bulb food or is that going to be a problem to them?" With Paul's permission I added his pictures to the wiki along with a picture of the purple one growing and flowering in his garden that he had posted earlier. Since we discussed this earlier on this list I thought you all might like to see some of the variations. http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… Mary Sue