Roger Whitlock, in discussing the promotional materials distributed with corms of Crocus kotschyanus, touched, tangentially, a topic I would like to expand. Roger wrote (I've paraphrased a bit) >Finally, Crocus kotschyanus comes close to pink...the color cards >provided with the boxes of bulbs in the fall show it in a deep pink...but >that's a blatant falsification. I sitting here surrounded by piles of catalogs. They are one of the real pleasures of the gardening life. But sometimes they are also a hoot: they have their share of petty deceptions and venalities. Here are some of the real howlers which are repeated each year. Maybe the rest of you can add to this list. Lycoris squamigera is generally illustrated by a photo of Amaryllis belladonna. The Amaryllis is among the most elegant of bulbs; the Lycoris is, by comparison, a sort of hoyden country cousin. Do the people who buy from these catalogs blame themselves for the degradation which has apparently occurred under their care? Lycoris radiata is often illustrated by Nerine sarniensis. There is some irony here, because Lycoris radiata was still being marketed as Nerine sarniensis in my youth. In this case, the Lycoris and the Nerine are of comparable beauty, and what eventually blooms in the garden has a passable resemblance to what you saw in the catalog. Allium giganteum and A. 'Globemaster' are often illustrated with foliage of something else - Clivia, for instance. Anyone who has grown these Allium knows that their foliage is pretty ragged at bloom time - hardly photogenic. So the ever pliant photographer has 'improved' the picture with alien foliage which has a remote resemblance to the real thing when it is in good condition. Pyrethrum (Tanacetum coccineum, the plant generations of gardeners knew as Chrysanthemum coccineum) are sometimes illustrated with photos of Callistephus chinensis, the annual China Aster. The China Aster has a broader color range which includes colors not seen in the Tanacetum. At least one of the catalogs offering the Chinese tree peonies has in the recent past used photos of lactiflora peonies to illustrate the blooms of the Chinese tree peonies: the foliage in the background is the give-away. OK, everyone, it's your turn: why not chip in a few examples from your own experience. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@starpower.net Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7, where - not, of course, that I would know anything about this from personal experience - I'm wondering if those people who use phoney photos of themselves for the dating services are gardeners who learned this sly art from the plant catalogs.