Hi Dave and all, According to Alan Meerow's DNA studies, the Nerines are embedded in the ancient African clade while Lycoris are part of the Eurasian clade, which also includes Narcissus and Galanthus. Nerine is most closely related to Crinum, Amaryllis, and Brunsvigia, e.g. bigenerics like Amarine. Now I have seen plants 30 or so years ago, produced by Ms. Margot Williams at USDA using embryo rescue, the reperesented such wide crossdes aas you suggest. One was and African Crinum X Hippeastrum. If that cross can be made to work, Nerine X Lycoris could too, I'd bet. But you would probably have to be willing to use embryo rescue. Go for it! The Crinum X Hippeastrum was a weirdly distorted plant. It looked like the genes were not at all happy to be sharing the same cell nucleus. Regards, Jim Shields in central Indiana At 10:11 PM 11/20/2004 -0500, you wrote: >Hello all ~ > >In perusing the beautiful pictures on the Nerine pages on the wiki, a thought >occurs that prompts me to ask if Nerine and Lycoris are close enough that >crosses between the two genera are possible . . . certainly the flowers are >similar, as are the growth patterns. > >Best, >Dave Karnstedt >Silverton, OR >email: davekarn@aol.com >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA