I had a neat learning experience today involving Ambrosina bassii. At least two of us here in the greater Washington, D.C. area grow this plant - and both of us got our starts from Jane McGary. My friend Alice grows her plant outside in her Arlington, Va. garden which on the whole is a bit warmer than my garden in Montgomery County, Md. Alice's plant first bloomed last year; mine bloomed for the first time this year. Her plant this year began to bloom in November - or rather the spathe opened then. The spathe on my plant did not open until mid-December or later. I took my plant over to show her today, and I was hoping we might be able to cross pollinate them. The spathe on my plant is still fresh looking; that on Alice's plant is by now dingy. Since the spathe on her plant was past its prime, she volunteered to sacrifice it in our quest for pollen. That's when things got interesting. We cut open the spathe, took a look, and were not sure what we were seeing. At the base of the spathe was a hemispherical mass suggesting a geodesic dome which we suspected might be incipient seeds. Projecting up and away from that was a - a what? At first glance, there seemed to one or two anthers at the tip of this structure. Alice thought it looked more like a stigma. Were the sexes of this species on different plants? But something else had aroused our curiosity. The spathe has a pronounced bulge on its underside. When you look into the spathe from above, it seems to have a flat, planar bottom. What was the purpose of the bulge? We cut into the bulge and there was another surprise: the anthers were in there, in this separate little compartment under the compartment in which the female flower was found. The spadix in this species is broad and flat and fused on two sides to the spathe: this results in two chambers, one above the other when the inflorescence is in its usual horizontal position. The female flower/flowers are in the upper chamber and the male flower/flowers are in the lower. Very cool! But I have no idea how it works. We found what I'm hoping is pollen in the lower chamber of her flower - Alice says it's dirt, but I'm rooting for pollen. We ceremoniously dumped it into the flower of my plant and shook things up a bit - very scientific. I'll let you know what happens. Just a bit ago Alice sent me an interesting link for information about Ambrosina: http://edb.ups-tlse.fr/equipe3/MG/… Read all about it! Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/