Dear friends, Sorry been away and Qs have pled up. I'll speculate on answers. Apologies if this goes on WAY TOO LONG and detailed for this forum. Anita I suspect has only a few bulbs of L. squamigera and no other species. The chances of her getting seed are so extremely low, I'd still give it a ZERO. I grow hundreds of blooming stems and have had a very few seeds either with hand pollination using a variety of other species or manipulating cut stems. I suspect Sam Caldwell grew as many or more bulbs and species or was thrilled to get 3 seeds. No one -including Sam Caldwell - has produced a viable seedling. Prospects of producing viable L. squamigera seed. Never say never. Bear with me. L. squamigera is a very odd Lycoris hybrid. Let me review two genetic topics; Chromosome number and kayotype. Chromosome numbers: L. squamigera has 2/3 N = 27 L. sprengeri is 2N = 22 L. longituba is 2N =16 The only mathematical way to get 3N of 27 is by adding 8 + 8 + 11 or a full diploid set of longituba chromosomes and a haploid set from L. sprengeri. Even with this total almost 1/2 the genetic material 11/27 (40%) is from sprengeri and 22/27 (60%) is from L. longituba. Morphologically L. squamigera seems to be intermediate between the two species. Close enough that I'd belive this is the parentage. Karyoptype Gross chromosome morphology describes that each chromosome has 2 'arms' with a centromere (a denser distinct area) in the middle. Chromomes can be described as: metacentric- when the two arms are essentially similar in length and the centromere is the middle of the chromosome. acrocentric - when one arm is distinctly shorter than the other and the centromere marks the boundary or telocentric = when the centromere is essentially at the very end of the chromosome. Chromosome morphology is based on the position of the centromere and these forms are abbreviated as M, A and T respectively. Both L. longituba and L. chinensis have a karyotype of 6M + 10T = 16 L. sprengeri 's karyoptype is 22A L. squamigera is 6M + 10T + 11 A = 27 It sure looks like L. squamigera is a combination of all of longituba and 1/2 of sprengeri as the chromosome count alone suggests. Further evidence of this parentage. BUT L. chinensis has the same count and type as L. longituba. Culd it be a parent? I suppose it is 'as likely' as L. longituba, but L. squamigera shows none of L.chinensis' characteristics such as spidery form, ruffled petal edges or yellow/gold color. See below, too. At the risk of boring all but 2 or 3 readers, what this count and type support is the oddness of this parentage. There is no way for these odd bedfellows of numbers and forms to successfully line up to produce a viable gamete for fertilization to take place. Even a diploid of 1 set each would likely be sterile. This must be a rare cross to even be successful enough to produce the original L. squamigera. This hybrid is rather astoundingly and amazingly quite successful as it has become the most vigorous and wide spread of all Lycoris. Future squamigera crosses. The most likely candidate to fill out a viable tetraploid would be the addition of a single additional set of chromosomes from L. sprengeri to produce a 4 N = 38 ( 6M + 10T+ 22A), but this is highly speculative and I think unlikely. Note -all this info on plant genetics is fairly basic and readily available on the web - try searching "basic plant genetics", "plant chromosomes", etc. Anita check out a wikipedia articles on these subjects, too. History: L. caldwelli has the same N and karyotype as L. squamigera and may be the partner to L. squamigera using L. chinensis as one parent. It is closer to being intermediate between chinensis and sprengeri here, but very different from L squamigera and much later blooming. Experimental hybrids have produce longituba x sprengeri crosses that look similar to L squamigera as well as L. chinensis x sprengeri crosses although there appearance is less well described. SO.... Lycoris has many opportunities for hybridization and the production of beautiful garden worthy subjects, but L. squamigera is not likely to be a very productive starting point. Hope this helps more than it confuses. We are in the midst of today's rain (already over 3 inches in 3 days ) and might be another inch on the way, so I have time to sit behind the key board and catch up some. Thanks for holding out this far. best Jim W. -- Dr. James W. Waddick 8871 NW Brostrom Rd. Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711 USA Ph. 816-746-1949 Zone 5 Record low -23F Summer 100F +