Dear Dave, Good to hear from you again: Its been a while. >I don't know if the taxonomy of the amaryllidaceae and alliaceae has been >discussed of late here as I've sadly been ''out of the scene'' a while; but >I'm hearing that the lilaceae has recently been reclassified and that >amaryllidaceae have now been placed within alliaceae. Is this the case ? The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, a group of taxonomists centred around Mobot and Kew, have been pooling their molecular studies for some years across the whole range of plant studies. The most recent classification is known as APG III and is dated 2009. You can read an enormous amount about their findings at the following: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/ There you will find the following comment amongst others: Classification. Combining the three families Agapanthaceae, Alliaceae and Amaryllidaceae into Alliaceae s.l. was an option in A.P.G. II (2003), an option that was exercised in A.P.G. III (2009), although the name of the clade is there Amaryllidaceae. This basically arises from the following paper: Fay, M. F., & Chase, M. W. 1996. Resurrection of Themidaceae for the Brodiaea alliance, and recircumscription of Alliaceae, Amaryllidaceae and Agapanthoideae. Taxon 45: 441-451. If I can help further, please contact me privately and I will do what I can. Incidentally, I'm living fairly close to you nowadays, in Somerset. Best regards, David Victor