Kathleen wrote: >> along with daffodils and Hyacinthoides, what other winter-spring flowering bulbs are likely to persist and thrive, decades after planting? In my part of California, the one I see regularly is Amaryllis belladonna. There are clumps and strips of it around the sites of homes from the early 1900s. When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, my parents found a former homesite in Angeles National Forest where Narcissus had naturalized. It may have been someplace near Little Tujunga Canyon. This was a spot in a narrow river valley up in the mountains where you'd expect freezing temperatures every winter, and occasional snow. Those valleys are subject to stupendous flash floods on occasion, and this one was a jumble of big angular boulders mixed with trees. The house was long gone, but daffodils were scattered all over the place. You don't see daffodils around old homesites down in the flatlands, though, in either San Jose or LA. I suspect they want a little bit more cold in the winter, or maybe the soil is moister up in that mountain valley. Mike San Jose, CA