Hans wrote: "As we in Germany say : " What is first ? - the chicken or the egg " I would be glad to receive some opinions to my ideas ." First of all, my apologies for those who saw a similar post from me on Alpine-L. Hans, there's no question about it: the egg came first. Why? Because chickens lay a type of egg, the so-called cleidoic egg, which developed in the reptilian ancestors of birds. In other words, the egg was around for millions of years before there were birds/chickens. My comments on the questions surrounding flowering times are not so facile, and I'll save them for later. Jim McKenney