>I have just added a picture of Alstroemeria philippiana to the wiki: >http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… > >I sowed 114 seeds of F & W 10575 last December in my warm dining >room, and they surprised me by germinating in nine days. They grew >fast, sending long shoots along the window sill. They are each over >a metre long, and one has a single flower at the very end, 19 weeks >from germination, 20 weeks from sowing. > >Only a quarter to a third of the seeds seem to have germinated. The >whole lot are in a single pot. I moved them up to bigger pots a >couple of times, expecting to separate them after they went dormant, >but I never expected such speedy growth. > >This is a desert plant, primed to grow fast as soon as it gets >rained on, which is a rare occurrence in its home - Atacama/Coquimbo >area, Coastal Semi-Mediterranean Desert Zone. > >A lot of its leaves are drying. I wonder what it will do after >ripening its seed. On the desert, would it die back, leaving its >rhizomes waiting years for the next rainfall? Or does it act >essentially as an annual? When I grew A. philippiana it behaved as a perennial (in the greenhouse), but I was not able to divide the rhizome mass and clone the species. Roy