Jane McGary, in mentioning " that some authorities believe they [Tulipa saxatilis and T. bakeri] should be regarded as a single species" has anticipated a comment which I have been preparing. If they are considered to be a single species, and especially if the name chosen for that species is to be Tulipa saxatilis, we should not lose track of the circumstance that the plants in cultivation now and known respectively as Tulipa saxatilis and T. bakeri 'Lilac Wonder' are, from a horticultural perspective, different plants. The plant traditionally known as Tulipa saxatilis is evidently triploid and almost certainly a clone. In other words, nowhere in the world is there a sexually reproducing population of Tulipa saxatilis. To put it differently, you cannot raise Tulipa saxatilis from seed fertilized by another triploid Tulipa saxatilis. I was about to write that you cannot raise Tulipa saxatilis from seed. But you presumably can get Tulipa saxatilis to set viable seed by pollinating it with tetraploid pollen, but the resulting seedlings will not be Tulipa saxatilis. The only exception to this would occur if one were somehow able to convert triploid Tulipa saxatilis to a tetraploid, and then do the cross: in that case, all of the genetic material involved would have come from Tulipa saxatilis. There is no reason to believe that is happening in the wild, or that it has ever happened. Some of you may wonder why anyone would care about this. Here is one reason: the history of horticulture if full of situations where an original named clone has been supplanted by similar non-clonal material. Unfortunately, the rules of nomenclature sometimes abet this problem. Here's an example: At the end of the nineteenth century, when it was fashionable for amateur hybridizers to give their hybrids Latin names (that practice is now a no-no), Commander Baden-Powell (he of Boy Scout fame) raised a hybrid martagon lily which he named Lilium dalhansonii (because it was a cross of the lily then known as Lilium martagon dalmaticum and Lilium hansonii). For purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the original Lilium dalhansonii was a clone. According to the modern interpretation of the rules of nomenclature, this name Lilium x dalhansonii is the legitimate name for all hybrids of Lilium martagon cattaniae (one current nomenclatural take on the old name Lilium martagon dalmaticum) and Lilium hansonii. So when you hear the term "Lilium dalhansonii", to what does it refer? Does it refer to the original, presumably clonal plant raised by Baden-Powell? Or does it refer to a subsequent hybrid of similar ancestry (and incidentally which may not look anything like the original)? There is the added complication that others repeated Baden-Powell's cross and got similar plants. These similar plants got into commerce under the name Lilium dalhansonii. Can anyone say with certainty which of these plants is the one originally raised by Baden-Powell? Can it be said with certainty that his plant even survives? I don't think so. Jim McKenney Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7, where the name suggests that Tulipa saxatilis should be a good rock garden plant; does the name Tulipa bakeri mean that that tulip would be good roasted - no, no, that's probably Amana edulis.