On 21 Apr 2009, at 8:59, Jane McGary wrote: > A Muscari hybrid is being sold by Dutch growers under the name Bellevalia > pycnantha. It is obviously not that plant, and it's invasive. I got > cheated... Why does this not surprise me? A word of warning to all other bulb lovers: if you buy Dutch bulbs, do not take on faith the name on the package! You have to pretend to be from Missouri, the "show me" state. Assume all such names are pleasant fictions until the bulbs flower and are then carefully vetted against reliable descriptions. This endemic dishonesty in the Dutch bulb trade is no new thing. If you dig around in AGS bulletins from ca. 1950, you'll find complaints about misnamed Dutch bulbs then. Where is the distribution network the presto-change-o switcheroo happens is unknown, but I've observed that the junk you get always has a superficial resemblance to the Real Thing: buy a purplish or bluish cultivar of Crocus biflorus/chrysanthus, and you will get a purplish or bluish crocus, but look out! It may be the weedy C. tommasinianus. I suspect the substitution takes place where the bulbs are packaged. We bulb enthusiasts are at a disadvantage because most Dutch bulbs are bought by, at best, weekend gardeners who neither notice nor care that they've been cheated. We enthusiasts simply don't have the power of numbers. However, in most places the law puts the onus on retail sellers to make good mislabellings of any sort, so if you are steamed over such substitutions, simply dig up the interlopers and mail them back to the source with a demand for a full refund, including postabe both ways. It doesn't matter who did the substitution: you were sold mislabelled goods, and if it wasn't the retailer's fault, he has a legal comeback against *his* supplier. Diseased bulbs are another feature of the Dutch bulb trade. Especially devastating can be ink spot disease of reticulate irises. In former years when I actually bought these, I'd peel off the bulb tunics, carefully exise fungal sclerotia from the bulb proper with a razor blade, dust the wounds with sulfur, and then plant the bulbs in a quarantine pot until the next summer, whereupon I'd decant them and repeat the process. I no longer buy Dutch reticulate irises, however, because the risk of destroying my healthy stands of Iris winogradowii and Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' are too great. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island http://maps.google.ca/maps/…