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graphic of BX contributions

This page contains historical data about the Pacific Bulb Society bulb and seed exchange or BX (also SX). Please note that seeds and bulbs from old BX are not available. If you are interested in obtaining items from future BX please keep an eye on the BX announcement bar here on the portal, right above the articles.

One reason to need historical data is to find what the items you got from a BX are. The lists below are the first place to look, but you can also find all the original BX announcements in the PBS list archive by using the search function. Often there is more information about BX items from contributors to the list.

From BX 1 to 433 (2002 through 2017) the exchange was managed by Dell Sherk, and from BX 434 to 463 (2018 and 2019) Albert Stella was manager.

From 7/22/2002 through 11/3/2019 there were 463 BX offerings, and over 9500 items. Click on the links below to download the past BX lists as PDFs. The final document consists of the first five joined together and is useful if you need to search all the BX listings for species names.

BX 1 to 100
BX 101 to 200
BX 201 to 300
BX 301 to 400
BX 401 to 463
BX 1 to 463

In addition to the BX there have been some larger seed only exchanges known as SX. Initially these were run by Steve Marak before Dell Sherk took over. The above PDFs do not cover the SX, you can find the contents from the following links to their announcements.

SX 1 (30 Oct 2014)
SX 2 (06 Feb 2015)
SX 3 (03 Aug 2015)
SX 4 (17 Oct 2015)
SX 5 (06 Feb 2016)
SX 6 (05 Sep 2016)
SX 7 (25 Nov 2016)
SX 8 (20 Jun 2017)
SX 9 (28 Nov 2017)
SX 10 (12 Jun 2018)
SX 11 (24 Jan 2019)

In January 2020 M Gastil Buhl posted to the PBS list an analysis of BX contributions.

The ten most often offered genera were:
Oxalis
Zephyranthes
Moraea
Calochortus
Hippeastrum
Lachenalia
Narcissus
Gladiolus
Habranthus
Allium

The ten most often offered species as bulbs were:
Oxalis obtusa
Oxalis flava
Oxalis hirta
Oxalis bowiei
Ferraria crispa
Oxalis sp.
Oxalis purpurea
Lachenalia mutabilis
Moraea sp.
Amaryllis belladonna

The ten most often offered species as seeds were:
Zephyranthes primulina
Veltheimia bracteata
Rhodophiala bifida
Habranthus tubispathus
Moraea villosa
Clivia miniata
Zephyranthes drummondii
Zephyranthes reginae
Amaryllis belladonna
Calochortus venustus

The graphic to the right comes from the same analysis, red shows the number of bulb items and blue the number of seed items.