I had a fairly large garden of Eastern US woodland wildflowers for about 20 years up until summer 1996. Every so often we would have a spring when many of the plants bloomed just at ground level. I believe (no scientific recording of data here) that the issue was one of the combinations of air temperature and soil temperature. Soil temperature varied rather regularly from year to year, but there could be a spring when a sudden warm (even hot) spell of air temperature could blast flowers which were just emerging from the soil. If the air remained a normal cooler temperature, the stems would elongate prior to the flowers developing and opening. If it suddenly got warmer than normal the flowers would open at whatever stem length they had gotten to before the warm weather. Further, depending upon when in the bloom cycle the warm "snap" occurred, it might have more or less noticeable effect on the flowerings. I have been rather curious about a related matter, that being the issue of stem length at blossom time for Hippeastrum. Some years a particular plant will flower with a nice long stem, and then the following year have just a short and rather unattractive blossom presentation. Somebody must have done some systematic work on stem elongation in Hippeastrum for all the flower trade that goes on. Who knows where this information might be found? Boyce Tankersley wrote: > When I gardened in southern New Mexico the tulips often bloomed at soil > level. Never figured out if it was a lack of sufficient chilling or the > very high sunlight levels that kept the stems from elongating. >