Hi Melanie, We traded earlier this spring, I would be very interested in your torch lily. Please take a look at my trade page and let me know if you would be interested in trading again. I also have another type of elephant ear available, it's a Xanthsoma Violaceum. Pat Here is a link that might be useful: My trade list

Thanks for your thoughts. Update: late at night I looked at him with a flashlight. For some reason they panic less - like a deer in headlights? At any rate, could see fully formed gills ie layers so on, but NO gill covering. (he would occasionally turn so I could compare sides and try to measure gill so on - I could clearly see well defined layers of 'gill' sorry forget scientific name, but just was missing that top outer cover with scales and coloring. Like if our skin were torn off, pink. No oozing, no mucus,nothing else. He as I mentioned has been like this when I saw him first at store - many weeks now. So seems he survived with this damage. Swelling has gone down as well. I found some info late last night that mentioned a particular bacteria and or parasite (forget now) that erodes the gill covering when not treated early enough (dang those stores, I kept telling them to treat that tank) and this is what seems to have occurred. I have treated for both gram neg/positive and external parasites. I have put all but three red eyed columbian tetras into the main tank. (20 gallon long, planted with annubias, rocks and two outside filters) 9 Red eyed columbian tetras and three mystery snails. He is in with remaining two with mouth 'fungus' ie probably flexibar bacteria. Just now using more natural methods and off meds, I find spot treating, salt, and pimefix sometimes works better for patches of this hard to treat bacteria- I think he will be fine just don't expect gill to regrow? He is really fiesty, and I guess will do fine and I will need to keep a watch on him. Thanks Sherry

Here is a follow-up development: While I suspected the tree suffered from chlorosis from the alkaline heavy clay, I bought a can of iron-chelate and experimented it on one of the branches. I dissolve a few grams of iron-chelate powder into about 2L of water. Then I dipped all leaves in the "experiment branch" in this diluted iron-chelate solution. I then dumped the iron solution right onto the root ball. After 3 days of the treatment, I noticed that the dipped leaves appeared much greener than the rest of the tree, which hasn't improved (or got worse). So I still suspect cholorsis in play with the red maple tree. I am going to dip more leaves to see if there is any good improvement. By the way - against all wise advises we still decided to replant the tree in order to: (1) Raise the tree bed to improve drainage (2) Cut the circling roots (3) Most importantly, remove the sod that I, due to lack of experience, burried at the bottom of the planting hole. At the time of exvacation, the root ball was swimming in a large pit due to poor drainage (not visible from the surface). The smell was awful (guess this is what CSI calls "decomp"). We removed all of the decomp mud, washed the tree's roots, and cut off the roots that have been affected by the rot. We also cut off the encircling roots. We then widened the planting hole from 2.5' to 3.5', filled it with fresh black earth & clay (30-70 mix). We elevated the root ball to be about ~6" above the ground surface. We compacted the mound to make sure there wasn't large air pockets. Then we covered it with ~4" of red cedar mulch, leaving about 6" of space around the trunk. It looks like a large red donut circling the tree. Hopefully the tree will recover from the surgery.

I have a few of the common ones and I used to work at PDN back when he was trying out every color there is. There is very little difference in the leaves - all are more or less grass like blades, some have a wider base and some are more blue-ish. My opinion is that they like as much sun as possible and well drained soil. The bloom quality and quantity seem to be affected by weather more than anything else - some years are better than others. Mine bloomed while quite young but the larger clumps seem to bloom more. I remember seeing an article years ago in a gardening mag that said that most of the species come from mountainous areas where it is very wet for one season and then dries out the rest of the year.