Pro Lycoris versus nothing
James Waddick (Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:25:35 PDT)

Dear Jim et al;
Over the last couple of years various people in my sort of
climate have reported their near total lack of success in growing
Amaryllis belladonna to bloom ANY WAY. I have tried many suggestions
offered on this list and had NO BLOOM. On the contrary, most Lycoris
are easy here. This is not due to a defect in the bulb, just stating
climatic givens. My preference is for plants that perform in my
climate with a minimum of extreme or special care.

It continues to be a frustration that over some 13 years I
imported and resold well over 20,000 (yes thousand, maybe closer to
30K) Lycoris species and selections-over 30 different forms. I sold
hundreds, probably thousands to "bulb growers"/ nurseries. For the
most part, these bulbs were potted, prices tripled or pentupled (sp?)
and resold with almost no effort to establish these in a nursery.
There have been a very few exceptions.
Even now I think you can fairly easily obtain upwards of half
dozen Chinese Lycoris, almost that many Japanese species and
selections. Unfortunately few of these are raised in the US. I think
this may say more about the nature of American 'nurseries', than the
lack of Lycoris propagating materials.
Although a few nursery people actually talked to me about
growing and establishing various species (and I uniformly encouraged
and helped each one), I have yet to see much results. I don't want to
name these nurseries as some are on this list and others you would
know. And I fully understand that it is easier and cheaper to simply
buy bulbs and resell them, than actually grow your own nursery stock,
but it is short sighted. And it takes a long time and much effort to
actually establish a plant in number suited to an annual harvest.
And in 2002 I sold over 2,000 Chinese Lycoris bulbs (23
varieties) Were you not interested less than 2 years ago?

I don't want to complain about American nursery habits, but
it seems to be a disheartening trend that more and more mom and pop
growers have disappeared, been bought by big conglomerates or gone to
being brokers of plants grown cheaply 'somewhere else' and not
actually growing their own plants. We should encourage specialty
'growers' to actually grow specialty plants. I am not, nor have I
ever claimed to be commercial bulb grower. I even warned buyers hat
imports could stop any time. They appear to have stopped now, but
that's another story.

Best Jim W.
--
Dr. James W. Waddick
8871 NW Brostrom Rd.
Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711
USA
Ph. 816-746-1949
E-fax 419-781-8594

Zone 5 Record low -23F
Summer 100F +