Dear Iain, In 2003 and 2004 I organized a topic of the week where each week or less often in the second year we talked about a subject of interest. Usually someone introduced the topic and some of these introductions were very thorough and enlightening. I linked them all to the wiki so they could be easily found at a later date. We talked about three genera in what we call the Brodiaea alliance: Brodiaea, Dichelostemma, Triteleia. Some are still considering these to belong to the Themidaceae family. Since many of these plants are native to California and I am interested in my native plants I did the introductions. Some of the species are mountain plants and would be under snow in winter. Others are foothill plants where it wouldn't be as cold, but certainly freezing during their growing period. Others are coastal where temperatures are more moderate. You'd probably do better with the ones from higher elevations. Most of them come up in late fall after it starts raining after the dry summer (although the mountain ones I grow are later to appear), grow during winter and spring and bloom spring into summer before they go dormant. The mountain ones would have thunderstorms in summer, but the Mediterranean areas of California almost never get rain after it stops in spring until sometime in the fall. Coastal areas get some moisture from fog, but the soil is quite dry where the corms would be. The general advice is to keep them dry in summer as heat and water during dormancy is thought to cause problems. Some are probably more tolerant of summer water. There is a lot of information on the wiki, but here are my Topic of the Week Contributions: Triteleia: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/old.php/… Dichelostemma: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/old.php/… Brodiaea: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/old.php/… I wrote about the last one every day and others joined in too, so I just listed the archives. Look for the posts under Brodiaea. There would be additional posts on Triteleia in the January 2003 archives and on Dichelostemma in the May 2003 archives. Blooming in my garden at the moment are Triteleia crocea, Triteleia hyacinthina, a form of Triteleia ixioides, and Triteleia laxa. Dichelostemma capitatum is appearing throughout the garden. I think I saw one Brodiaea open today, but most of them bloom much later. But we've had weeks of dry weather and warm temperatures and I'm afraid the blooming period may get shortened but my garden has been a riot of amazing bright colored bulbs for quite awhile now as my South African bulbs have been putting on quite a show. I hope this helps. Mary Sue