Nhu wrote,A packet of the Calochortus seeds was recently passed on to me. It turned >out that the seeds came from Ron Ratko of Northwest Native Seeds (NNS). >These were the leftovers and is most likely the absolute last chance to get >such a wonderful variety of wild-collected seeds, so I thought I'd pass >them on to the BX. They are mostly from 2004 and 2005 but Calochortus seeds >are known to have a long shelf life. This is quite true. Several years ago Ron Ratko gave me a number of packets of old Calochortus seed, and they all germinated well. Even more impressive, I received some packets of various western American bulb seeds from the Robinetts' collections that had been stored for more than ten years, and the Calochortus and Allium seeds came up like grass. I hope my order gets to Dell in time to take advantage of this offer. I'm already growing a number of the items so will leave those for others. If you think some of these are too challenging, you may be wrong. This year, after I got all my Calochortus bulbs out of their big pots and into free-rooting conditions in raised beds under cover, they flowered with astonishing success. (Perhaps having the flowering stems eaten by rabbits for the two previous years had strengthened the bulbs.) Even the rare Calochortus striatus bloomed, far from its blazing hot alkali flats; it was grown from one of the collections available on the BX. Advice on sowing: Sow the seeds thinly. If they germinate, it's likely they will do so en masse, and they are very vulnerable to damping off if growing too close together. Do not keep the pots in too warm a location, and water only moderately. Don't try to move the bulbs on during their first dormancy, as they are very small, unless you can just take the whole pot of soil in a compact clump and put it into a larger pot. Always give Calochortus bulbs as much depth as possible. They descend rapidly during the growing season. Even if you don't normally crock your pots, it's a good idea to do so with bulbs that "drop" like this, because they will otherwise drop right into the drain hole and clog it, resulting in rot at worst or a broken pot at best. When I had everything in clay pots plunged in sand (see current discussion on "plunge media"), I put a few pieces of lava rock around the drain hole to prevent this. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA