> > Daar Diana, Have you found that Calochortus seed > set affected blooming the following year? Bob Werra Well, I'm not sure! It seems that Calochortus don't bloom every year. Whether this is related to seed production or not I haven't tested out - but this sounds like a good future project! In the wild you can get spectacular bloom in a good year and almost none the next year even if weather conditions are favorable. I've been fertilising my Calochortus regularly - mostly to produce bigger bulbs - and they do seem to bloom more reliably with fertilisation, but since there are lots of bulbs in each pot and not all of them bloom it's hard to say whether it's because of seed production or other factors. Here I often cut off the flowers as they fade since I don't want seed from plants that could possibly have crossed with other nearby species, but I haven't noticed that removing the fading flowers and preventing seed production produces more blooms the following year. The Brodiaea group bloom much more reliably. I wonder if this is because they are corms and Calochortus are bulbs? I have a theory that dry land bulbs of the western US often have internal clocks that tell them not to bother to try to produce flowers and seed each year. The extreme example of this is Hesperocallis undulatum which can remain dormant for several years, producing not a single leaf even though other plants of the same species and in the same location have found conditions suitable for growing. I grew these bulb for a while and thought I was going a little crazy, since the first year I had dozens of shoots, the next year about five re-emerged (OK, I thought the others had died), the third year about eleven re-emerged, the next year three, until I tipped them out - and they were all still there!! This could be a survival mechanism since weather conditions can often be unpredictable in the drier parts of the west and if they all sprouted because of early rain, then there was no more rain (this can happen) they would have wasted valuable reserves for nothing. With Hesperocallis, though, it would seem that each bulb has a different clock telling it when to emerge. Very interesting! Diana