Dear All, Jim McKenney really likes to stimulate conversation on this list (or shall I say stir things up)!! As I emerge from my repotting to read posts it seems obvious to me that we all are going to have different favorites and that is good. If everyone grew the same thing, gardens would be really boring. Since the members of this list have widely different conditions: winter rainfall, summer rainfall, different soils, different day and night temperatures year round as starters of course we will have different levels of success and as a result different favorites. One of the reasons I have been doing topics of the week on favorite colored plants was to show the great diversity of this list. Each color we have done has produced many different favorites. Blooming this month for me from two different batches of misidentified NARGS seed (both identified as different species of Rhodophiala--not) is Habranthus tubispathus. I had given away all the plants I had of that species, concluding that a bulb that needed hot humid summers with rainfall to stimulate the blooms was not a good choice for coastal Northern California. A few days of bloom a year was not going to justify the summer water it would want. I am sure it must be someone's favorite where it blooms off and on in mass all summer. It's disappointing to me however to have it once again. Even the planting out trick didn't work with these. They just disappeared never to be seen again. On the other hand, I have the first bloom from seed of the most gorgeous big flowered orange Cyrtanthus, C. sanguineus. I started it from Silverhill Seed October 4, 2001 after seeing some I greatly admired at Lauw's in France and thinking if he grew it I might be able to grow it too. I think Jim Waddick has given it a thumbs up too. In this case we are both successful even though we have very different growing conditions. No doubt his plants are protected in winter. Also blooming as of yesterday is another Cyrtanthus, this one from Bill Dijk seed started May 2002, Cyrtanthus eucallus hybrids. Paul Chapman was with me when I was looking at what Bill Dijk had brought to sell in Pasadena when he visited the USA and said he thought I could be successful with Cyrtanthus eucallus. It isn't as dramatic as the other one, but still is very beautiful. I'm not sure how Bill Dijk manages to get so many blooming flowers at once. Mine are staggered which is fine since that means they bloom for a long time. My Cyrtanthus montanus-elatus hybrid has also been blooming a long time and yesterday I spotted a white C. mackenii. All are bring me a lot of pleasure!! Bill has so many pictures of Cyrtanthus on the wiki I'm not sure I need to add any of mine, but have added a close-up of C. sanguineus showing the nice markings in the throat. I also added a couple of pictures taken a few months ago of Cyrtanthus mackenii when it was blooming then too. http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… I've also added some pictures of the C. eucallus hybrid. Bill's all look orange and mine is more of a salmon color. I positioned it next to one of those white "big showy baffons (sic)" with the cheap flash now gracing my garden for a second photo. It does indeed look a bit small in comparison. Lycoris success is unlikely where I live and Amaryllis belladonna hit or miss even though the species is naturalized in the wild where I live, but when it hits, I enjoy it. http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… Mary Sue