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Hippeastrum solandriflorum
Been waiting 8 years for a bloom. Long flowers 

Hello Carlos,

Thank you very much for your information. I have no issues with the correspondence with Leigh, both for the Amaryllid book and the bulbs everything went very well.

I checked the VAT for living plants in Germany and will correspond with Leigh accordingly. The bulbs will soon be dispatched.

Bye for now 

Seems my very wet May wil end in a very wet finale - until Sunday there are about 150l/m² predicted - let's hope the rivers can deal with this... anyway, yesterday there was a sunny break in between showers, allowing for some wet flower beauty shots:

Lets start with the Alliums: Allium cristophii

already sparkles when dry, but the water adds another layer. For such a big plant it's astonishingly weedy seeding around. Allium obliquum

Height:	60-100 cm (2-3.3 ft)
Flower Colors:	yellow
Flower Season:	late spring to early summer

is more well behaved but multiplies enough to be slowly moved to more places in the garden - too bad the timing is a little bit off this year as they are brilliant in combination with European gladiolus.

Speaking about combinations: the next one is Iris filifolia

with Beschorneria septentrionalis - the latter one being a classic example what should not be on the wiki (together with Hesperaloe) but also a favorite in seed exchange. Staying on the Iris topic, the Iris spuria

s really put up a show. If anyone has an idea as to why the upper leaves turn yellow? couldn't bee too dry as we're drowning, so it may be too wet?

Also going for mass effect is one of the summer Oxalis, I think it's Oxalis stipularis, we may have to add that to the Wiki in time. Less weedy and more of a pain to bulk up some stock is of course Weldenia candida

- give me another 5 years and I can contribute some to the EX 

Last but not least is my first flower of Tigridia chiapiensis - it seems to be easy for some but I always failed to grow them from seed so I had to resort to buying a bulb. Sidenote on Tigridia: This year, several pavonias have survived the winter planted out in the garden. climate change, hooray!

Sprecklia howardii a few days ago 

Closing out May...it's amazing what a couple days of warm weather can bring out in the garden.

1- Gladiolus 'Atom' or 'Atomic' (considered a 1940's hybrid of Dalenii). A nice reliable garden Glad, great color and presence in the garden. One of the earliest Glads when I was just getting into SA bulbs to add in my garden.

2- more common Amaryllis that I'm trying to get looking good in my sunny SoCal garden. Another couple's first season looking pretty good for a few days in the sun.

3- Progress shots of my Watsonia Meriana.

Farewell May. Here comes the heat!

Hello everyone.

I had placed an order to Shire Bulbs and another one to the SA Bulb Company with a colleague before the orders from the PSB were placed, so I have my bulbs (photo attached).

Overall it all went OK but we had an issue with VAT and I think it is advisable to ask Leigh if she can give directions to DHL (I assume we are going to choose DHL, as we had the bulbs delivered in France within 4 days, after being almost 10 days sitting in the premises of Mailwise (Mail-lazy?), once they finally shipped they would have taken three weeks more to get to the EU!!)

I told Leigh about it and got no answer but I'm getting used to that when I email her. The % of VAT is calculated using the total amount in the invoice, it's not a fixed amount like the phytosanitary tax, so in big orders it can be quite considerable.


"Hi, Leigh, ------ has the bulbs, it was really fast, thanks. There has been an issue with DHL as they declared the contents as "dried flowers"which was charged a VAT of 20% instead of declaring "living plants", which are charged 10% only.

By doing it that way, the import tax was 10% and not  5.1% and though we skipped the phytosanitary tax of 31.50 euro, overall we paid more in taxes.

It seems that DHL does this randomly (we had a previous order from another supplier declared as Tonka beans - Dipteryx odorata, I had to look it up), but I thought that they had enough experience to be aware that bulbs are living plants, why else do they carry a phyto?

Maybe you can try to make it clear for the European orders from the PSB (I don't know how it goes in the USA).

Anyway, ------- complained to DHL, we might have some money back. [Note: no answer from DHL]

Finally it seems that if the invoice comes in ZAR, the VAT will be lower, at least that was what happened with the other seller. This is something you don't have to know, I suppose".

I had some bulbs of Eucrosia bicolor I managed to import from Thailand (yes, it's easy to find in the US) in a bag with substrate to send to a colleague, and when I went to look for them this is what I found. They must be got wet with the last rain (over a month ago)...



So my colleague will have to wait, or I'll have to bring them to Barcelona (he is on chemo unfortunately, but it seems to be working).