Mary Sue wrote, >I recently found my husband had taken a picture of our rare fringed corn lily, Veratrum >fimbriatum. I've been admiring the leaves as they emerge lately on my hikes. They really are >impressive. This plant flowers in late summer and at that time can be a bit scruffy after all kinds >of insects have had a chance to eat it and without rain for months everything can be dusty. Still I >was rather surprised to read that this species was unattractive in Bulbs of North America. I'm not >sure I'd call it beautiful, but the flowers are very intricate and certainly interesting. Writers who remark that Veratrum species are unattractive are generally referring to the plants in flower. Many species have small, green flowers that don't appeal to gardeners. However, few serious gardeners fail to be attracted to the foliage of veratrums, especially if it is not damaged by slugs and snails. I grow V. californicum (one of the more attractive in flower) in the garden, having collected seeds from the roadside nearby and sown it in situ. It took almost ten years to flower but now flowers every year. The rootstock is a large bulb, or sort of bulb (I'm not sure just what one should call it) with heavy feeding roots. Digging a mature plant is quite a project. The bulb makes offsets, eventually producing a large colony in moist soil. The leaves are beautiful in spring, and they seem to develop a resistance to slug predation over the years, so even without bait they eventually look good. They do, however, wither by midsummer. Veratrums are a feature of alpine meadows all around the Northern Hemisphere, where they are striking as they are often the largest plants in the community. Their common name is "false hellebore," which I can't understand as they don't resemble hellebores in any respect except in having green flowers. They are quite poisonous. Alaskan native people used them as a wound dressing; they regarded the plants as so powerful that they left a small gift in the hole after digging a plant to propitiate the plant's spirit. Jane McGary Northwestern Oregon, USA