I was unsatisfied with 'basin' for the area surrounding a stream/river because, as Cody notes, there are a lot of "basins" mapped in the western USA, and they have quite a different look to me from the photos of the cuencas submitted with the Hippeastrum book, which appear more like steep-sided but wide canyons -- in itself a word that may not be meaningful even to all American English speakers. Possibly the history, or lack of history, of glaciation has something to do with this? I don't think of a "basin" as something whose main feature is a river, though certainly in my part of North America a basin often has streams running into it during part of the year. If our geological colleague prefers "watershed" to "drainage," I can see that the former is more technical, but it might not have meaning to some readers of the English version. I may just keep the Spanish word. After all, we use loan words from many languages for land features, such as "arroyo" and "chaparral." Anyone who is using this book is likely to be a South American who knows what a cuenca is, or a foreigner who doesn't need to know unless they are in Bolivia, in which case they can see for themselves. Learning the flora of most parts of the world entails getting used to some native landform or vegetation terms. For people who are in other parts of the world and want to grow the plants appropriately, information on elevation, soil, steepness, climate cycle, and moisture are there. I was surprised to learn how many Hippeastrum species grow in moist places. I haven't seen them in the wild, and I had a sort of idea that they grew like Rhodophiala or Placea in Chile and Argentina, in drier situations. Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…