Hi Everyone,

In 2009 I bought what was labeled as 2 papilios at a local nursery; they turned out to be Giraffes which I was just fine with. I got flowers the first year and then the 3rd year. In the meantime the Narcissus Bulb Fly ate one of my bulbs so I was left with just one. When I went to repot it and remove the dead bulb this is what I found:

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I repotted it in a larger pot to give plenty of room for all those bulblets! For the next few years the pot grew plenty of leaves but never bloomed. The other day I took a closer look at the pot and was able to lift a bulb right out with no resistance. I proceeded to pull 13 bulbs out all with rotted basal plates and no roots left. The bulbs themselves were hard and showed no signs of rot. I scrapped off all the rot with my fingernail and I feel confident that I have it all. It really only went into a few of the bulbs about 1/8 of an inch which was easily scooped out.
Now about half of these bulbs still had green leaves. I can only surmise that the pot got and stayed too wet and as the fact that all the bulblets grew from the deceased mother bulb totally covered under the soil that they were just to wet. This pot was in my hot bay window where it gets lots of sun and is only watered when I water the other bulbs in this window. It was a clay pot.

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So, I am drying them out and then I think I will just paper bag them and put them in a cool closet and plant them outside next spring and hopefully a few of them will grow a new basal plate with roots. Is this possible for a bulb to regrow a basal plate that has rotted off completely??

I may take a couple of the larger bulbs after they have completely dried out and sit them on top of some soil to see what happens.

Does anyone have another ideas what I should do with these 13 golf ball or larger sized bulbs?

Thanks for reading this and I hope I can once again see the lovely flowers I had 5 years ago. I think I remember Royal Colors sold Giraffe so hopefully if these all die they will offer them again and I will buy 2 new bulbs!

Donna

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