On 15 Nov 04 at 7:58, Mary Sue Ittner wrote: > At last Diane W. will have her chance as she early on wished > we'd talk about blue flowers. Please nominate your favorite > blue bulbs that you grow. Without a doubt Tecophilaea cyanocrocus! Not only the queen of blue bulbs, but the queen of blue flowers generally. It has a reputation for being tender and especially prone to the depredations of slugs because of its scant foliage, so mine are kept in pots in a bulb crate that can be carted to safety if we get sub-freezing weather. I haven't found it the easiest bulb to grow, but adopting an idea on the web from a grower in the LA area, my bulbs are now potted in a mix that is ~50% canary grit -- very fine granite grit, really a sharp sand. The granite is believed to provide plentiful potassium, but very slowly. I had the pleasure of hearing Alberto Castillo speak at the 1993 Western Winter Study Weekend held in San Mateo. (He's the reason I attended.) I asked him specifically about tecophilaea culture and got two tips: first, grow it in a circumneutral soil, neither particularly acidic nor particularly alkaline. Second, give it *cool* dry summer resting conditions; don't bake it in the sun like a species tulip. My pots usually go onto my north-facing front porch for the summer after the foliage dies back and are kept there, bone dry but in the shade, until repotted around the beginning of September. There are three forms of Tecophilaea cyanocrocus: the type, which is a deep, pure blue; T. c. leichtlinii, which has a large eye of white; and T.c. violacea, which is distinctly purple. I believe there are crosses between these forms in cultivation now that have given a wider range of color forms. Also, the recently discovered stand of it in the wild (first sighting in 55 years) is reported to have been of intermediate colors. I believe a white form has been reported from in cultivation, but somehow a white tecophilaea seems to be missing the point. The other tecophilaea species, T. violiflora, is not worth growing as the flowers are quite small. Or so I have been told by someone who should know. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island