I was intrigued by the discussion and looked the plant up on the Wiki. I've never seen it in habitat but I've been in areas in the Baja Cape that look like the photos. The climate in southern Baja California is unusual, so it might be good to review it. Temperatures are high all year, very high in the summer. Even at 2200m altitude it will be above 90F in the daytime during summer, and not much cooler in the winter. Nights at altitude will be cooler than near sea level, but there's a reason resorts didn't take off in the Cape until air conditioning was invented. In the winter there may be several days of overcast weather with coolish rain, but it's not nearly as cold as southern California in the USA. Since the plant grows over a wide altitude that means temperature isn't that important; the plant is hot all year. Precipitation is completely irregular in the Cape region, which receives somewhat more rain than the area to the north, because the tropical storms tend to track more to the south. Rain arrives at any time of year with big storms that dump a lot of water in a relatively localized area. Gentle winter rains are rare but possible. Many Baja plants are adapted to grow at any time of year when water is available. The photo shows a plant growing in a dry watercourse. Such soil is loose and composed of varying sizes of gravel and sand. After a good rain upstream, there will be surface water in that channel for a few hours to days, but the soil just a few inches below the surface may stay moist for days to weeks depending on the depth. I might guess the seeds sprout during the aftermath of a good rain, which is probably during the hot summer, and if the soil stays moist long enough they may survive to the next rain - hoping that arrives before they wither away. Because the rain is so unreliable they probably take a long time in habitat to get large enough to bloom, and I would predict leaves wither as seeds ripen. The developing fruit probably sucks water from the bulb, which will then need to replenish its stores and grow through a few rain episodes before another bloom cycle. The green bloom stalk probably produces quite a bit of food through photosynthesis. The plants probably don't produce leaves every year, but only after rain. Leo Martin Phoenix Arizona USA