On 21 Feb 2009, at 19:24, Jim McKenney wrote: > the presence of stem bulbils in tiger lilies is one of the features of those > lilies which is hardest to account for – which parental species would have > provided the genes for stem bulbils? There needn't be some genetic doo-dah specific to Lilum tigrinum and its parents. It's very common for sterile triploids to resort to vegetative propagation. In fact, many commercial clones of bulbs are sterile, selected in the wild for their powers of vegetative reproduction and later determined to be triploids. I have Brodiaea howellii here from its only known site on Vancouver Island. It multiplies by stolons with bulbs at the ends and hardly ever flowers. The few flowers formed never set seed, which suggests triploid sterility. It's become a weed, in fact, having spread from a tiny number of very small bulbs to take over an area perhaps a meter square. I've wondered what would happen if treated with colchicine to create a hexaploid. Godzilla? King Kong? Mothra? -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island http://maps.google.ca/maps/…