This may well be true for best growth of Crinum lineare, but C. variabile is an opportunistic grower, and grows outdoors in the ground here in Indiana is summer, blooms in August-September, and is dormant in winter. Opportunistic, not winter-growing. My plants of C. lineare are forced to grow in summer, and might do better if allowed to grow in the warm greenhouse in winter instead. Sadly, they are out of luck on this count. I wonder if C. variabile was ever given a real chance to grow opportunistically before? I had been growing the seedlings of variabile in winter inside the greenhouse, and they were doing very poorly. They were left warm, dry, and dormant in storage in summers. They barely grew over several years. I was on the verge of simply pitching them, when Jim Waddick's nagging about how hardy crinums were made me plant some of them outdoors in the ground instead. (If I was going to kill them anyway, I might as well experiment on the way, right?) I was astounded to see that they actually flourished in the ground, outdoors all year around. This is not the first time the Brits have been wrong about growing things in North America. Jim Shields At 03:08 PM 7/5/2013 -0400, you wrote: >C. lineare and C. variabile are the two species from the Cape. >According to Brian Mathew, "they will behave as winter-growers and >require a dry summer while dormant." > >Russell ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Lat. 40° 02.8' N, Long. 086° 06.6' W