On 26 Sep 08, at 20:43, Tom Mitchell wrote: > Does anyone know of a reference work on Colchicum more recent (and better > illustrated) than E.A. Bowles' book form the fifties? I'd love to try and > identify what I've got... Rix & Phillips, "The Bulb Book", 1981 Mathew, "The Smaller Bulbs", 1987 Grey-Wilson & Mathew, "Bulbs; The bulbous plants of Europe and their allies", 1981 Synge, "Collins Guide to Bulbs", 1971 However, as with some other groups of plants, the cultivar names in Colchicum seem to be irremediably scrambled, and have been for a long time, so there's no guarantee that even fairly authoritative books like these have it right. It might be best to identify not as "this bulb is such-and-such cultivar" but, rather, "this bulb matches thus-and-so in book-X, something else in book Y, etc." Good luck. PS: Please try to take photographs that make clear the distinctive features of each of the forms you have and post them to the PBS Wiki with such identifications as you are able to pin down. A 17% neutral gray card may be helpful in compensating for color balance issues. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island http://maps.google.ca/maps/…