Dear All, When we were discussing Gethyllis as the topic of the week I mentioned that it was one of the plants that Peter Knippels wrote about in his book on growing bulbs indoors. His bulbs were growing on a very unusual schedule and I wrote him to ask about this. He was away and has only just returned and was kind enough to answer my question. When he wrote the book, he was writing about his experiences with growing bulbs indoors. The Gethyllis were collected from the wild and sold in Western Europe. He was growing them on a Southern Hemisphere cycle in the Northern Hemisphere, but not very well. When he turned them around to be growing at the correct time, they did better, or to use his words, they "survived." Every year they produced a few leaves, but the bulbs didn't grow and he is no longer growing them. I was reminded of a very funny post from the old IBS forum and Charles Gorenstein who managed the IBS seed exchange for a number of years. Some of you may remember reading his hilarious account of his experiences doing that. I wish I knew his email address to get his permission to share his post which I saved. To summarize he started with a good sized bulb from a friend, but it started to rot. He saved it, but it was reduced in size (lemon-size). The second year he had the same problem. The third year it started to rot again after it started growing. So after three years he hadn't seen any leaves and the bulb was the size of the walnut. He suspected that at the rate he was going it would disappear in a few years. He spoke of spiking the water with prozac, but it wasn't clear whether that was for him or for the bulb. The leaves of the ones I got from Gordon Summerfield (most of them) are still green. Bob Werra got his turned around successfully so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Mary Sue