I'm fascinated by all of these Eucomis stories. I've never been able to keep Eucomis alive outside for more than a few years. Even in relatively protected sites here the spring comes when they do not reappear. I'm convinced that when I was younger the winters were colder. You young 'ins don't remember the blizzard of '59 when I had to trudge through six foot snow banks to get to school and the creek froze... Oops! That's another story. Maybe I should try again. That Ellen in Oswego of all places is able to grow these outside just baffles me. Here, even against a wall they eventually disappear. I wish someone would post a photo of a mature blooming Eucomis pole-evansii to the wiki. I have grown this plant for years as a pot plant and it has yet to bloom. How tall is it when it blooms? Old accounts say six feet (Col. Grey: "over seventy inches"). That I would like to see! And the stories of the floppy inflorescence sometimes seen in these plants: years ago I received some huge bulbs which were supposed to be Eu. Pole-evansii; when they bloomed, they had purple-pink flowers. They were enormous: each inflorescence must have weighed a pound or two and was as big as a base-ball bat. They were so big that they could not support themselves and flopped badly. They reminded me of huge corn-dogs (for those of you not deeply into the more refined aspects of American cuisine, corn-dogs are hot dogs - frankfurter sausages - coated in corn meal batter, fried, and served on a stick). Jim McKenney Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7, where the spiffy hair-do plant has so far refused to persist in my garden in any of its several forms.