Just to offer a view of Roscoea from the Pacific North American point of view, following the excellent introduction by Robert Hamilton: Like most East Asian bulbous plants, roscoeas need summer irrigation and excellent drainage in winter to flourish in the Pacific Northwest. (Their normal climatic regime is just the reverse of the "Mediterranean" one.) Those I have grown are R. cautleyoides, R. humeana, R. scillifolia, and R. purpurea. Only the first-named survived for a long time in the garden, and I think it is the most commonly grown in the UK also. They do better in gardens at lower elevations than mine where the soils tend to be peatier and more retentive. They are much preyed on by slugs, which of course love the shady, moist sites that roscoeas also favor. Thus, roscoeas are plants for the cooler, maritime garden, to be planted among other summer-growing, shade-tolerant exotics such as Asian asarums (another slug favorite). One interesting thing about these plants is that the flowers seem to become larger year by year as the plant ages. Young seedlings are not impressive in flower, but wait 3 or 4 years and they will look better. They are easily grown from seed, but germination is erratic. The ovary with the seeds can be hard to find -- in some species at least, it is far down in the sheathing leaves. The plant commonly grown in North America as R. alpina is likely to be R. scillifolia, which was distributed by several nurseries under the former name for a number of years. Jane McGary NW Oregon