Dear PBSers - For all intents the tulip season is over, but I see a few seedlings of T. sprengeri are getting ready to bloom for the first time. The seed came from the NA Rock Garden Society and I should check the label to see how long they took from seed. Seems like a few years. I went to the PBS wiki and was quite intrigued to read of their history - Worth excerpting a bit of Roger Whitlock's introduction: "A single bulb was found in a shipment to the Dutch bulb firm of Van Tubergen from their collector in Turkey, J. J. Manissaadjian before World War I. It has been traced to the region about Amasya, but has never again been found in the wild. Curiously, Tulipa sprengeri does very well in gardens, seeding about with freedom. So much freedom, in fact, that in the early 1950s, E B Anderson, who was then administering the first seed exchanges of the Alpine Garden Society, specifically asked that seed of Tulipa sprengeri not be donated. Nonetheless, when one looks through the standard references on species bulbs, Tulipa sprengeri is often noted as rare and/or expensive. It is very odd that a species that seeds so freely in gardens is evidently extremely rare in the wild." Even wholesale I see they are around 6 E ( over $US 8 each! (Yikes) So much for self seeding and weediness. Does anyone of our PBS members have enough of these 'weeds' to donate to the BX? Looking forward to bloom in the next few days - provided we get some sunshine one of these days. Misty rains in Kansas City Jim W. -- Dr. James W. Waddick 8871 NW Brostrom Rd. Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711 USA Ph. 816-746-1949 Zone 5 Record low -23F Summer 100F +