Dear All, I got the following private response to my post on Monday: "What is an Androcymbium and where is your picture of it?" Androcymbium is a short-stemmed or stemless geophyte (corm) in the Colchicaceae family. Species are found in the Mediterranean and in Africa, mostly southern Africa and often in arid areas there. They can be described as suitable for plant collectors or curiosity pieces. The flowers of the African ones which are the only ones I have seen are tiny with "cupped tepal limbs", but they often have broad and sometimes colorful floral bracts that look like petals that enclose the flowers. Common names are cup-and-saucer, men-in-a-boat. Some of these bracts can be white or red and therefore are much more interesting than the flowers. Seeing them in the wild I found ones I thought were quite cute, but then I like those short plants like Massonia and Polyxena. I made a wiki page for Androcymbium: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… and added a couple we saw in the wild and then three versions of my plants that show the nice shiny leaves and the flowers. Bill had labeled the seeds as Androcymbium ciliolatum which is apparently now considered to be A. capense. But using the key in the Color Encyclopedia I think they are A. latifolium which is a synonym for A. pulchrum which is how they were listed in the Nieuwoudtville field guide. The stamens are much longer than the tepal blades and the bracts are not white as in the other species. Unfortunately my plants only have red coloring on one of the bracts unlike the nice red bracts we saw in the Nieuwoudtville reserve. They also appear to have 6 flowers instead of 2 or 3 as described in the Color Encyclopedia, but the ones pictured in the reserve and I am sure of them look like they have a lot of flowers. It is possible that my plants are a Namaqualand species that is not included in the Color Encyclopedia key. If so, I hope Rachel or Julian will straighten me out so I can name it properly. It seems to fit the key for A. latifolium. I'd also like to know the history of the name changes if anyone knows. Since the Mediterranean species are supposed to resemble Colchicum more closely I hope Jim Shields will upload a picture of the one he has blooming to the wiki for comparison, or at least put a picture on his web page with a link so we can see what it looks like. Mary Sue