Mary Sue et al., << Are Alberto, Jane, Lauw, Diana, and I the only ones growing this genus? (And Doug Westfall who has a picture on the wiki). Anyone else willing to share your experiences?>> I do grow a few Dichelostemma species, but many are still as maturing seedlings. I will comment, though, on the hardiness of D. ida-maia, and the putative hybrid 'Pink Diamond'. Both of these have been in the ground here for three years and I was somewhat surprised to see they have come through our past very long and cold winter completely unscathed. Both are building up nicely and flower very reliably. They are situated on our well drained south facing slope and planted at the base of daphne genkwa shrubs, through which they grow to good effect. I followed with interest the recent thread on the taxonomy of these plants, and their relatives. I remember Mark was rather upset when I used Themidaceae on my website as a home for images of Brodiaea, Dichelostemma and Triteleia. I also sense the wind was rather taken from his sails when Alan Meerow commented that the justification for this segregation was largely on the basis of nucleic acid studies, rather than more traditional morphological and tangible characteristics. It is very unfair of taxonomists to use characters such as DNA comparisons, to classify plants ! I guess we have arrived at the stage whereby plants that 'look' incredibly similar are put into different major taxa based upon differences in nucleic acid sequences etc. This should not be a problem in practice as long as there remain clearly differentiating morphological characteristics which allow taxa to be unequivocally identified in the field. A 'correct' classification has to lead to a working identification scheme else it is useless in practice. The current trend may be academically stimulating and more correct using current thinking, but seems to be leading to a dichotomy between characteristics used for classification and identification. Anyone wishing to see a copy of my thesis entitled 'Aspects of the Biology of Acidophilic Actinomycetes' should contact their local library. This contains a detailed numerical taxonomic characterization of this group of interesting bacteria - which is probably hopelessly outdated now ! J. Dr John T Lonsdale 407 Edgewood Drive, Exton, Pennsylvania 19341, USA Home: 610 594 9232 Cell: 610 476 0428 Fax: 801 327 1266 Visit "Edgewood" - The Lonsdale Garden at http://www.edgewoodgardens.net/ Zone 6b