Tigridia pavonia needs a dry winter rest to replicate the natural conditions that it faces during the dry season in Mexico. The genus Tigridia in Mexico is adapted to grow during the 6 months of rains (May-October) but remain dormant during the remaining 6 months (November-April). In general, the bulbs do not face harsh, freezing conditions during their dormancy. Perhaps some of the species that grow at high altitude (3000+ meters) might face a few hours of frost right before dawn but this is only for a few days per year. Mexican Tigridias will start into growth with the first sprinkles of rain. This pattern of behavior includes T. pavonia, or at least the varieties that are adapated to grow in Mexico. It is my conjecture that if you transplanted Mexican Tigridia pavonia bulbs to your South American cloud forest that they would probably rot during the wet winters. However, your variety of T. pavonia that grows in South America is adapated to be more resistant to year-round moisture. My experience with Mexican Tigridias is that any significant source of moisture in the pots during the "dry" season will almost assuredly rot the bulbs. The publication, "The genus Tigridia (Iridaceae) of Mexico and Central America" by Elwood Molseed mentions something about hybridizing between different species. He did some experiments and says that it is hit-and-miss, but I will have to recheck what he wrote and post it here. I have access to T. augusta, but the bloom season passed already for this year. This morning I put pollen of a yellow T. pavonia variety onto T. mexicana. I will report if a seed capsule develops. -Dennis Mexican altiplano PS - I recently photographed the cardinal-red flowers of T. mortonii in the field. These are the first photographs known of this species that I "re-discovered" at the type locality 2 weeks ago. It had not been seen since 1934. I will post them to the wiki shortly. > Dear Tigridia lovers, > I read an old post about the need for Tigridia to have a dry winter rest. While this may be true when winters are cold, the situation here in the South American Andes is quite different. Here, Tigridia pavonia is a cloud forest plant (1500+ m in elevation, 3000+ mm annual rainfall), growing all year round with no synchronized rest periods (though individual flowering stems die back, of course). It does very well here, self-seeding into lawns and other open areas. Soil is not particularly well-drained. Bulbs always seem to be quite small, but plants are robust. > Tall bearded irises have the same behavior here. They never go dormant and they flower asynchronously. Hippeastrum do the same: asynchronous random flowering. Some of our native bulbs like Phaedranassa sp. have the same bahavior. > There is a mild "less rainy" season here in Nov-Dec, but these plants don't seem to go dormant then. Those months are still very wet here compared to most places on earth. > I am working on hybridizing these cloud forest Tigridias. Does anyone have experience crossing T vanhouttei or T augusta with T pavonia? Some past posts talked about experiments in that direction, but no results were mentioned. Anyone know where to get T augusta? Anybody have experience sending pollen through the mail? > > LJost > > South American cloud forest >