Diane wrote >It never occurred to me that it could be an annual. > >The seed packet said A. phillippiana. It grew amazingly long and >skinny, and then had a pale pink flower with two lower petals with >three zones (white, yellow, pink), all streaked magenta. (so easy to >augment one's memory with a digital photo.) A lot of alstroemerias will grow very long and skinny under greenhouse conditions; this is annoying, because growing them "hard" will keep them in character, but some species are quite tender and will perish even in the frame. Diane's description seems to have the flower upside down from the botanical perspective, as it's the upper tepals that generally have the zones and markings; they are called the "inner uppers" in descriptions in English. Diane's description would fit the lighter color form of A. philippii (note spelling), particularly if the pale pink tepals had deep purple dots at the indented apex, which has a little mucro (point) within the indented part. A. philippii has both a coastal and a slightly interior distribution within a narrow latitudinal range. I'd expect it to be pretty tender. It is a tall species in nature, often growing through shrubs or scrambling through rock outcrops, where I've seen it. Jane McGary