On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Tony Avent wrote: > Not being much of a chef, and one who is never allowed near the oven, I > should have distinguished between dry baking and evenly moist baking. > We have our best luck cooking lycoris with evenly moist baking. Our > trials have also shown that dry soil reduces flowering, therefore we > irrigate regularly in our sunny areas .... Lycoris bloom has been very interesting this year here in NW Arkansas, about 200 miles south of Jim W. All of my lycoris came from Jim, except L. squamigera and the fertile form of L. radiata which were acquired locally, and a few bulbs of L. sanguinea. I got bulbs from Jim over as many years as possible and put them where I had space at the time, so they've wound up scattered around in various beds. During the dry summer period, some of these beds get no supplemental water, some regular and plenty, and a few an occasional drink during the very driest periods. All but one are full sun. I've never really been able to correlate water with time of flowering, though I've had the problem of very short stalks or poor bloom in dryer beds. Some years, those which got no extra water flowered at exactly the same time, and little if any less, than those with regular irrigation. Typically, L. radiata always flowered last, after everything else was done and setting seed. This year was very different. We have been unusually dry, well below "normal" rainfall for at least 18 months now. Beds with regular extra water had lycoris in flower several weeks ago, almost to the day Jim W. reported his first blooms. Beds with no extra water had no flowers at all. About 10 days ago, we began to get rain, and today they're flowering everywhere. L. radiata is in full bloom alongside chinensis, squamigera, sprengeri, etc., and there are more stalks coming up from groups I had thought done for the year. And they all look great. My unscientific impression is that the most prolific flowering is in a bed which is in full sun and gets regular extra water .... Steve -- Steve Marak -- samarak@gizmoworks.com