WHen I visited Japan last spring, I was amazed to see how Cardiocrinum grows in the woodland in the north of the island of Honshu. There were plants (not yet raising flowering stems) of every size, that is, age, all over the flatter parts of the moist streamside deciduous forest. It was a major part of the herbaceous understory and mostly growing as individual plants, suggesting that seed rather than offsets was its primary means of propagation. Here in western North America many of us struggle to grow Cardiocrinum well, because it is hard to provide enough summer moisture and humidity for it. It is also attacked badly by slugs. However, a grower just south of Portland used to produce thousands of bulbs which he started in raised beds in hoop houses (poly tunnels) and then brought on in irrigated fields in full sun. I've seen the plants that resulted flowering in 2-gallon pots at garden centers, priced at $50! In those pots they probably were not making offsets, and the buyers would find themselves with nothing when the monocarpic bulb died off. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA