Dear Jim, I found your discussion of why plants bloom in the fall very interesting. It certainly makes sense for the fall blooming Amaryllids in South Africa whose seeds so quickly start into growth. Some of these seeds can be growing weeks after flowering and without favorable conditions like plenty of moisture they will not survive. The question or observation that I was raising, obviously not very well, was that in California, at least the parts that are considered to have a Mediterranean climate, even though growth does not start until the beginning of the rainy season, the bulbs that I'm familiar with do not bloom in the beginning of this season, but at the end. There are of course exceptions that bloom soon after the leaves appear in the late winter, early spring, but a lot of them come into growth from October to December but don't bloom until May to June, sometimes after their leaves have withered. There are areas of Southern California that don't get cold and have limited amounts of rainfall so you can't explain it completely by saying that the rainfall or cold would prevent flowers from being pollinated although in areas like mine excessive rainfall would certainly be a good reason to delay flowering. Harold's comment that bulbs blooming (in the fall) would have a better chance of being pollinated because there is less competition does not explain why all the California bulbs bloom at a time when annuals, perennials, and shrubs are also in bloom so there would be a lot of competition. If they bloomed in the fall there wouldn't be much competition, nor is there a lot of rain then. When some of us read the fascinating Dallman book, Plant Life in the World's Mediterranean Climates, we were impressed with the differences in these climates. California and Chile are completely dry in summer where some of the other places have less rain in summer, but still have some rain. In fact the rain in summer may be one of the factors stimulating Gethyllis to bloom in South Africa. Rachel has written that the fall blooming Amaryllids are often better after the summers they have had extra rainfall. When I visited Lauw in Southern France, he mentioned how dry the soil was and the handful I felt was not dry by California standards. When it first rains in California the soil is so dry that you can dig down in it afterwards and the soil is still dry. Would it take longer for our bulbs to start into growth? That was why I wondered if Chile had fall blooming bulbs or if most of their bulbs bloomed in spring or summer like ours. How about the Mediterranean areas of Australia? They don't seem to have as many bulbs as some of the other areas, but they do have some and as someone recently said all those wonderful ground orchids. I wonder how many of their "geophytes" bloom in the fall. In other words I was just curious to see if people had any theories about why there are fall blooming bulbs in some Mediterranean areas and not others. Perhaps this has partly been answered by the nature of the seeds. Mary Sue