Alberto and all- Well I would say it might be possible to commercially cultivate them with the correct facilities, however as you well know, it is often easier to make a profit from direct harvest from the wild with all the associated problems and the conservation status of wild plants seems to be grim. It would seem a fair number of these are still wild collected from what information I can find online and from links like this one below it would seem collection has contributed to impacting the wild populations. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/201627/0/ I have found a couple references (see Crinum thaianum wikipedia page for instance) to its use as an ingredient in somehow for a cream to soften the skin but I have not found any information about where the plants used for this purpose come from or whether they are grown commercially or what the name of this cream is I don't anything about the source and the photographer, but here is a link to a Google + web album that has some really great photos of the Crinum thaianum in the wild showing flowering seed and habitat https://plus.google.com/photos/… Here is a second link to a summary of a newspaper article that gives a bit more information about the photographer and his connections to the Crinum thaianum though I have not acquired or read the full article. http://bangkokpost.com/news/local/… I should mention too that 12 feet was the longest I got the foliage to grow in an aquarium but by moderating nutrients I can maintain them at a somewhat better 5-7+ feet... still it is a lot of vegetation and I usually remove offsets and never have more that three bulbs in the main aquarium at time as well. Steven, I grow a number of aquatic plant and especially quite a few waterlilies and use several types of the pelletized slow release fertilizers you describe and they work great. They are generally not recommended for aquaria however and anyone familiar with the general guidelines for for freshwater live plant aquaria would think I was nuts for putting such high yield nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers in an aquarium but I have actually not had bad results from it as long as I didn't use too many and used ones that were really slow release. Too many isn't a simple number because of the variables but generally getting close to overdoing it with the fertilizer meant such vigorous grow of some of the plants that it hard to manage and still have the aquarium "look good" and various green algae growing far too well. Not green water so much but hair algae and filamentous types. I tried extra fertilizer to see if this would trigger flowering and it didn't though that is how I got the 12 foot foliage! Perhaps if I had get it well fed for longer I would gotten it to bloom well, but the maintenance was too challenging. In ponds it was not a problem of course with greater water volume. I have experimented with it a couple times using offsets I remove from my tank in water gardens . It did well in still water as long as it wasn't overshadowed but the nicest one I grew in a pond was situated so that the outflow of an artificial stream/waterfall flowed across it. I think the main problem I have had growing it in ponds is the winter interruption as it doesn't "like" the colder weather. If you can get one Steven I would guess Crinum thaianum would love your climate in the right pond site. Leo might have the same problem I do though no harm in trying it. Alani Davis Tallahassee Florida On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:06 PM, Alberto Castillo < ezeizabotgard@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Wow, Alani, that was really comprehensive! If they offset so well, then > the stock in the trade is probably not wild collected. > > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > -- Alani