I've tried this both from seeds and from one bulb I was very lucky to get one year shortly after joining IBS (a few years before PBS got started). I got seeds from Southwestern Native Seeds (they offer it every year) and from a guy who sold all kinds of plant seeds out of Redwood City, California. (I can't remember his nursery's name.) I tried them in three different years and always planted them in the autumn like a lot of mediterranean climate bulb seeds, and they always germinated in great quantities. Germinating them was never the problem. They would grow through the winter outside in our South. Calif. winter rains just fine. Then they'd go dormant when it got warm. But they never, ever, sprouted again after that first year. Haven't tried again recently. I got the mature bulb when this one IBS guy offered them for sale, after a housing development was being built and the developer bulldozed up a large quantity of the bulbs. I planted it in pure sand in my deepest pot. (The pot was about 2-2.5 feet (60-75 cm) deep and I planted it about 6 inches (15 cm) from the bottom.) I kept it completely dry during the summer and placed in the warmest part of the yard, although protected the pot from direct sunlight so it wouldn't cook the bulb. I let the natural rain fall on it during the winter, still outdoors. I never got it to put up any leaves, although I would eventually check it in the middle of summer and it was always the same size and appeared perfectly healthy. This went on for about 5 years. Then one summer, the bulb wasn't there. It seems to grow just fine in nature in quite a number of desert locales. It can be seen most years in the high desert half of Mojave National Park although it appears in far greater numbers when there are good winter rains. Monsoon moisture probably isn't necessary because the monsoon effect tapers off pretty dramatically between Phoenix, Arizona and Palm Springs, California. (We just drove back from Texas via the Interstate 10 freeway this summer for family vacation and stopped at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. We learned that Saguaro cactuses ripen huge quantities of seeds in the middle of summer and then the small seeds depend on the summer monsoon rains in order to germinate. Thus, there are more saguaros that germinate in good monsoon years than in dry years. We noticed after driving past Phoenix that the density of saguaros diminished more and more and finally disappeared altogether after crossing the Colorado River into Blythe, California. This matches with what I saw a number of years ago while perusing the climate records of the various cities and towns between Phoenix and Palm Springs.) I have an aunt and uncle who have some property down in San Felipe, Baja California (Norte). They visit there at least twice a month over the past 20 or 30 years. San Felipe gets very little rain, even in the winter. In fact, a big chunk of any rain they ever get is when a hurricane or tropical storm hits Baja California far enough north that the remnants reach their area in what is called a chubasco. However, some years ago when there was a really big El Niño throughout the winter, lots of rain fell that winter down there. They went down one weekend in the early spring and they arrived around midnight during a full moon. They told me that for miles and miles, as they got closer to their destination, the desert appeared to be covered with white lily blooms shining in the moonlight as far as the eye could see, and they rolled down their windows and the air had this heavenly scent my aunt says she'll never forget. Wish I could have experienced that. One last experience similar to all my failed Hesperocallis seed germinating experiences: A few years ago I got seeds sent to me from two different locations in Baja California Sur (South) some distance north of Cabo San Lucas of Behria tenuiflora (syn. Bessera tenuiflora). Both are basically desert locations with rainfall mostly due to tropical storms and hurricanes that might pass that way. Like Hesperocallis seeds, the Behria seeds germinated quite easily with great germination percentages, and I planted them in the autumn. They grew well all that year. Then went dormant when it got warm. I tried watering them in early autumn when I thought it might mimic getting rained on by a tropical storm remnant. Only a very few sprouted, but grew just fine. The following year, I did the same thing, but out of maybe 75 initial seedlings, less than a handful sprouted. The year after that none sprouted and when I checked the pot, all the small bulblets I'd seen the year before were completely gone. I'm not sure what these two species are looking for to grow and/or flower and thrive. But I must not be mimicking what they experience enough or in the right way at all. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a