Gethyllis as a house plant
Mary Sue Ittner (Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:36:42 PDT)

Dear All,

When we were discussing Gethyllis as the topic of the week I mentioned that
it was one of the plants that Peter Knippels wrote about in his book on
growing bulbs indoors. His bulbs were growing on a very unusual schedule
and I wrote him to ask about this. He was away and has only just returned
and was kind enough to answer my question. When he wrote the book, he was
writing about his experiences with growing bulbs indoors. The Gethyllis
were collected from the wild and sold in Western Europe. He was growing
them on a Southern Hemisphere cycle in the Northern Hemisphere, but not
very well. When he turned them around to be growing at the correct time,
they did better, or to use his words, they "survived." Every year they
produced a few leaves, but the bulbs didn't grow and he is no longer
growing them.

I was reminded of a very funny post from the old IBS forum and Charles
Gorenstein who managed the IBS seed exchange for a number of years. Some of
you may remember reading his hilarious account of his experiences doing
that. I wish I knew his email address to get his permission to share his
post which I saved. To summarize he started with a good sized bulb from a
friend, but it started to rot. He saved it, but it was reduced in size
(lemon-size). The second year he had the same problem. The third year it
started to rot again after it started growing. So after three years he
hadn't seen any leaves and the bulb was the size of the walnut. He
suspected that at the rate he was going it would disappear in a few years.
He spoke of spiking the water with prozac, but it wasn't clear whether that
was for him or for the bulb.

The leaves of the ones I got from Gordon Summerfield (most of them) are
still green. Bob Werra got his turned around successfully so I am keeping
my fingers crossed.

Mary Sue