Now that the days are getting longer and the frost should soon be out of the ground for some of us the following info might be of interest to members and lurkers like myself. It maybe that a few cognoscenti of the PBS List might already be aware of this company, Jacques Amand International, who are based in the south of England in the UK. Headed now by John Amand the range of geophytes etc is really quite remarkable. What stands out for me is at least here in Europe it is one of the few companies, maybe the only one, which consistently understand that in respect to bulbs in the genus Lilium that where the roots are not shaved to the base of the root plate and are not treated as are the jacketed bulbs such as Narcissus, etc, survival is invariably better. In my researches to date it has become clear that those suppliers of Lilium invariably supply bulbs either obviously affected by grey mould or when looked at closely they clearly have it in the early stages leaving the bulb to possibly flower in the first season but rotted to hell in a hand cart thereafter. I suspect the rough handling in this way goes a long way to explain the losses. Lack of these roots whose seasonal growth most on this list appreciate are initiated in the Autumn before flowering and therefore make or break the next year's ability to make sustainable growth and flowering. I am not going to name the firms who fail to appreciate the damage they do, I'd get sued, but I am sure several are well known anyway and often material can be tracked back to one particular continental European country. I have known of and dealt with this firm for several years and never had a single cause for concern about the quality of material supplied. They produce two catalogues annually but also have a website however the range of material on the website bares no relation to the breadth of what they supply so its best to ask, usually you will get a pretty prompt reply. John Amand will often go out of his way to find stuff of particular interest and if you saw his display stands at shows over here you would die from unbridled envy, I invariably buy stuff I never had in mind to do so, his firm are not just dealers but actually propagate material as well but cost for all of are an issue so much of it comes in from specialist growers all over the place as John Amand tends to roam around the world in pursuit of direct sources rather than work through others, I imagine because he prefers to ensure he gets what is promised. I think we have all had experiences of that sort especially in relation to two particular Chinese sources at least. The company has a presence in the eastern USA from where they distribute their bulbs. info@jacquesamand.com Jacques Amand PO Box 4000. Ancramdale. NY12503. Their UK address is The Nurseries. Clamp Hill. Stanmore. Middlesex. HA7 3JS. England. United Kingdom. The same e-mail address works for both firms. Regards, Iain -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 179460 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len/ The Professional version does not have this message