Hello, This dioscorea was seeded feb 2000, so it's over 9 years old. is that typical for first flowering? the tiny flowers have a fragrant sweet smell! and here are the pics! bad macro focus on this one: still bad... my point-n-shoot camera... or me :) a little better focus a whole plant shot. caudex half-buried, for size, but i still want to be able to look at it!

Norma, you mean like this? The HTML code for changing the font size is to use "" but without the quotes, and inside the greater than & less than signs type ... font size="insert number desired for font size here" *Note: The quotation marks after the equal sign ARE manditory. **Note: the font size # I inserted above was ---- font size="10" --- and you can see how large that turned out. Did that make sense? Now if you don't actually want to type in a larger font but only wish to make the words larger for easier reading, then -- assuming you are using IE as your browser -- then left click on where it says "Page" on the Menu Bar at the top of the screen. (It is located on the lower part of the bar on the right hand side.) When you click on that you will see a drop down menu. One of the options there is Zoom. When you left click on that, you will then see another drop down menu that will give you various options as to how much larger you would the web page to be.

Mentha, this plant has always been in the top of my wishlist, but I could never come down to the point to justify paying $30-50 for a seedling plant and also it's not very common to find such bulb plants in the east coast. Perhaps it's on the rarer side on people's planting list, so naturally it might take a while for someone that had grown this plant to leave a comment on your thread. There a quite a few questions on my end here: 1) How did your plant's bulb reduce to such a state? It looks as if someone chopped it into half. Is there more pics you can show of the bulb? A healthy Dioscorea's bulb is extremely thick with bark like features protecting the stem, like the following picture as shown below. 2) You said there is "no active roots alive", I do not understand what do you mean by saying this? Are those frayed vines the roots you are referring to? If you have not potted the plant for week-months according to your description, how do you expect the plant to thrive and have new roots growing? Your plant is probably exhausting its remaining energy from its bulb to keep itself alive. You need to assess for rot, usually brown mushy and decaying matter feeding on your plant. At this point I can't assess more due to the limited information and pictures provided. If the plant is rot free, pot the poor thing in a new well draining mix. If you want faster growth, plant the entire bulb completely within the soil, else you can pot with some of the bulb exposed, but you will get a slower growth rate in this sense.

I've watered my seedlings every time I felt the soil got dry enough that the pot felt light and they were in well draining but a good amount of organic mix. They've been fine since they were actively growing, I'm more worried about the "transition period" where at some point they prefer less water (?)...I have 2 older (but still quite young) plants that are in straight gritty mix and they also seem fine so I dunno. The seedlings like or tolerate watering well. I am considering adding some organic to the older plants and many of my other plants but just not sure. I already have to some, considering others. I kept the older ones going last winter under grow lights and the seedlings were just getting started. Does anyone know if it's better to let them go dormant? Our winters are for sure too cold to leave little plants out there but I could leave them out of the grow light's reach if they would prefer it. Tyler, I also have to say that I take back my wishy-washy attitude on trellising and stand firmly on the pro side of trellising - I turned my back for a minute and my vines got unruly, tangled themselves and latched on to other plants. I had a roll of wire that was just a nice enough gauge to bend into a U shape and stick right in the pots, making a beautiful, sturdy little arched trellis for my D's. Kara, from what I understand the caudex doesn't really like / benifit from the sun at all, only the vine. So I would say it is not necessary to keep it in sun unless possibly that is for warmth? Someone correct me if I'm wrong. TanP - nice Mexicana! And on the eliphantipes am I reading your post right that you have 8 month old seedlings that are the size of a half dollar?? Please, please elaborate if I read that correctly! hoovb - that D at the Huntington is absolutely jaw dropping, WOW.