Dear all, I was lucky enough this year to spend July botanising in Yunnan, western China. This is a mountainous area, rising to around 20,000 feet at its highest and stretching along the Burmese border up to Tibet, cut through by three great rivers, the Mekong, Salween and Yangtse. It accommodates some 16,000 species of plants and is the home of many of our garden plants. These were mainly collected by the great plant hunters of the 19th and early 20th century: French missionaries such as David, Delavay, Farges and Soulie, then their commercial successors Wilson, Forrest and, to a lesser extent, Kingdom Ward and Rock. I was part of a group led by Professor Sun Weibang of Kunming Botanical Garden. We travelled from Kunming in the south-east, through Dali to Liuku near the Burmese border, then north through Jianchuan and Zhongdian to Benzilan in the north-west. Mountain areas visited included Gaoligongshan, Xiaosueshan, Habashan and Baimashan. Along the way, we found a number of members of the lily family and I have added a number of pictures of them to the WIKI. Amongst the genus Lilium there were two turk's caps, L. duchartrei and L. taliense and one trumpet lily, L. sargentiae. These can be found at: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… We also found Nomocharis aperta, surely one of the most beautiful of all bulbs and this can be seen at: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… Last, but by no means least in this feast of plants, we found Notholirion bulbiferum, which can be seen at: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… Enjoy! Best regards, David Victor