Hi Joe and all, Some 30 years back, I had a wonderful collection of Hippeastrum species, almost all from Len Doran. Then I got mosaic virus in it somehow. I lost lots and lots of rare bulbs to the virus. We even tried treating the plants with some experimental animal/plant health drugs at the time, with no useful results. It was probably Hippeastrum Mosaic Virus, which belongs to the poty virus group. At that time, so far as I knew then, there were no tests for plant viruses outside research labs. The research labs I worked for were not interested in plant viruses; and I was in diabetes research, even farther removed from plant pathlogy. I had some Clivia plants two or three years ago that looked "virused" to me, and we sent samples to a state lab for general plant virus testing. The tests came back negative for all the viruses in the usual panel, including a group poty virus assay. I think the tests were all ELISA assays. I now suspect that the clivias that look virused may instead have a systemic fungal infection of some sort, but I've not pursued that line so far. At least fugal infections should be treatable. Nerine, especially the broad leaf forms like hybrids of sarniensis or bowdenii, tend to show mosaic leaf symptoms when they get fertilizer. The late Sir Peter Smithers thought that the plants harbor latent virus, perhaps virus genes integrated into their chromosomes, which are expressed only when the plants receive some sort of growth stimulation, such as from excess fertilizer. Again, no one pursued this line into the plant pathology labs, so far as I know. This effect is well known in bacteria and in animals, of course. The economics of studying the pathology of niche plants, like Crinum, Nerine, even of Hippeastrum, are such that nobody around here does it. The only assays available at the state labs are for those plants grown as crops in large commercial agriculture. Regards, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) At 11:25 PM 6/3/2007 -0500, you wrote: >Hi Gang, > >I've been intrigued by bulb viruses since the topic came up here a few years >back and on the IBS. I've scoured the WWW, scientific publications and have >written to colleages around the world to collect information about viruses >on Crinums. > >........ >Joe >Conroe TX ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA