On 13 Jun 05 at 16:29, Mary Sue Ittner wrote: > Who was Ken Aslet? I see this name attached to that > Oxalis with the nice leaves that never blooms and now a > Tropaeolum. Does anyone know? John Bryan answered your explicit question; let me shed some light on the implicit one. That oxalis of yours is correctly Oxalis purpurea 'Ken Aslet'. It has soft yellow, not purple flowers. [The specific epithet implies purple flowers, which might be worth having in its own right. Anyone got it?] The plants of O.m.'KA' here arrived under the name Oxalis melanost(r)icta from Avon Bulbs many years ago. It flowers from time to time -- seems to need a good drying off during summer. Fully hardy, having survived here for over a decade in an unheated coldframe, some winters without any cover. And Victoria *does* get serious cold snaps once in a while. > My Tropaeolum tuberosum, no cultivar name, lived for a > couple of years without blooming before it went to bulb > heaven. So you are way ahead of me. Perhaps twenty years ago, the "ordinary" form, grown from seed, flowered profusely here, climbing up into a Yellow Transparent apple tree. I didn't realize how unusual this event was. It seemed to relish the thick layer of organic mulch (pure compost over dreadful heavy blue marine clay) it was planted in. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island