Hi, gang. I wanted to share a little success story with you. It only took nine years, but Moraea insolens finally bloomed for me this week, for the first time ever. As you can see, it's a very cheerful deep orange flower with unusual brown and cream markings. It was quite a treat to find the little flower glowing among my other plants. M. insolens is a rare bulb, known from only a few spots in South Africa. Seed has been offered commercially a couple of times I know of in the last two decades, but it doesn't look like it's well established among PBS members. The only references I could find on the PBS list were that Joyce Miller once offered a few corms to the bulb exchange, and Will Ashburner in Australia reported once that it had bloomed for him (only two years after germination!). I wish I knew how he did that. In my garden M. insolens is not as easy to grow as most of the other Moraeas. I tried several times to grow it in pots, with no survivors. What finally worked was a raised bed in a spot that stays damp all winter. Even with careful care and watering, the bulbs took nine years to reach blooming size (the usual for Moraea species is 3-4 years). I know that's not a long wait compared to some Amaryllids, but for me it was a long delay. The little insolens seedlings put up a single threadlike leaf that was a little bit more robust each year. This year one plant put up a normal-looking leaf and then a short bloom stalk. I don't know why it chose to finally bloom this year. Fire is supposedly a trigger for these plants in the wild, so I burned some dry grass over them in the summer. Maybe that helped. Or maybe it just takes a long time to build up its strength in my climate. Anyway, it's a very cute little plant. If anyone else has this species, please ping me -- maybe we can exchange pollen, so we can get some seeds, In the meantime I am having fun trying to make hybrids. Mike San Jose, CA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: IMG_2202.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 2466290 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/pipermail/pbs/…> _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>