1. I've just spent over an hour in the March 2003 archives, learning about virus, Lachenalia in the ground in California, and summer watering of dormant bulbs, among other things. What a fantastic resource. 2. Luc, the abstract of the Iris bismarkiana article you mentioned is here: http://sciencefromisrael.com/openurl.asp/… Full text is available for $12, if no one has a subscription. If you don't feel like paying, the relevant point is revealed by the abstract: "Populations of I. hermona and I. bismarckiana in Jordan and Israel do not differ statistically from each other in morphological traits, and should not be treated as two independent species." 3. Problems with email formatting are caused by different character encodings, which are now an email client issue, not an operating system issue. Probably the mailserver can only handle 7-bit encodings, and someone is sending 8-bit. Although a nuisance, it could be much worse, as evidenced by by the recent tragic death of two people in Turkey because of encoding limitations in text messages: http://gizmodo.com/382026/… Best, Max Withers Oakland