My husband and I were lucky enough to be taken by David Victor to see Harry Hay and his extensive garden in 2004. In bloom for the first time from seed sown 21 years earlier was this species. It was very striking, but that's a very long time to wait. You have to be impressed however with the optimism of the people who grow things like this from seed. There are pictures of Harry's plants on the wiki page and a photo of the bulb from Jacob. <http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…> Harry lives in the UK which I would think would be very different from Namibia so perhaps if you lived in the right place the time from seed to bloom would be shorter. I've often wondered if it bloomed again for Harry. I've found with some of the plants I have grown from seed from South Africa that their best flowering ever is the first time they bloom from seed. Some things once they start blooming continue to bloom each year and others bloom erratically after that or dwindle away. It could just be my lack of skill or perhaps once they bloom they feel they have done what they needed to do. I believe Will Ashburner from Australia who some of you may remember from long ago IBS days made the same observation when he was keeping good records of what he grew. I remember also Tony Palmer from New Zealand complaining that Lapeirousia corymbosa often did not come up. Seed I got from Silverhill germinated so well that I gave a lot of the little ones away. It came up reliably until the year it bloomed (and bloomed really well) and since then it often stays below ground. This past year I had one flower from a corm that found its way into another pot, but none from several other pots of this species. I finally got Lapeirousia oreogena to bloom from Bill Dijk's seed (from his US trip) last year after wanting it for so long and I'm hoping it won't be a one time event. Mary Sue Mary Sue Ittner California's North Coast Wet mild winters with occasional frost Dry mild summers