I have begun an analysis of my gladiolus germination, which I hope will be useful to someone. The seeds have been mainly from Silverhill and Gordon Summerfield, with a few from alpine seed exchanges. I sow them when I get them, the only safe thing for me to do (When I was cleaning up for Christmas, I discovered a bag of unsown surplus seeds from 2004 - the big exchanges sell the seeds left over from their midwinter frenzy, and the price is too low to pass up. Unfortunately the seeds arrive in the middle of Easter egg hunts in the garden with all the grandchildren, or tomato transplanting time - so these ones were tidied away till they were found over 3 years later. Amazingly, a lot have germinated.) Back from the digression. I know that South African seed is supposed to be treated to a daily change in temperature, and for about a week once I did manage that. I had the bag of seeds in the fridge next to the milk at night, and in the morning, I'd remember to bring them out into the warm kitchen, and put them back each night. Too much to expect of anyone whose main job isn't germinating seeds. So they get a fairly constant temperature, whether sown in summer or winter. I keep them in the living area of my house which is heated in winter to about 18 C (70 F) in the daytime and a bit lower at night. If they are sown in summer, the house maintains about the same temperature. When they germinate, I put them in a pot in my unheated greenhouse which maintains a stable temperature as it is very big - right now, it is 10 C outside, and 15 C inside the greenhouse, and mimosa is blooming - about 4 m high. I've sown 80 packets of Gladiolus seed up to mid-January 2008 (I've made that the cutoff date because some of those have germinated.) So far, 19 have not germinated, 6 of them being Mediterranean, and the others South African. The fastest: leptosiphon 7 days involutus 10 days buckerveldii and pole-evansii 14 days huttonii 17 days flanaganii and geardii 20 days hirsutus 23 days The slowest: (of those which have germinated) kotschyanus and some unknown species from Iran 1 year natalensis 18 months I don't know how long seeds will remain viable but ungerminated (like my 8 year old Colchicum seeds). The oldest ungerminated Silverhill seeds: maculatus sown in July 2006 and trichonemifolius in November 06. I should dump them out to see if they are still sound. Diane Whitehead Victoria, British Columbia, Canada maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate mild rainy winters, mild dry summers