Beverly the email address I use for GW I do not check often, and have not checked it in about 3 months, until I checked it this morning and saw your April 18th reply message. Sorry am so late in getting you a reply, it's just not my primary email address and I only use it for GW. Glad you got the thread and liked it and were able to put it to good use. Best to you and thanks bunches, Sandra

Buehl, please do! I was just trying to save something of use. I'd been checking the GW all night, turned my back for 15 minutes to watch the Health Care vote, and whammo! all the posts were gone. I kept refreshing, thinking, "This can't be!"

It is my understanding that the daylily rust was brought in by the nursery trade, in a situation where quarantine was (inadvertently or otherwise) not exercised properly. Bringing seeds in is more of a worry if the seed is a weed species, or if the seed itself is dirty - contaminated by bacterial or insect pests. There are very few diseases that will be brought in with clean seed. Importing plants is a much higher disease risk. I agree though, that we should not encourage those people who might be trying to avoid the normal, legal methods of plant importation.... just because they want a particular plant. Re importing stuff in containers - we bought slate in castlemaine, that had been imported from india. The crates are supposed to be inspected before leaving india, but the crate previous to ours contained live lizards (hitchhikers) and when we finally got our slate, there was a dirty knife in the crate all the way from india. They are truly slack, and it is amazing that we don't have far more problems that we do.

Rosie (cimmaron), I have looked up the descriptions of Epiphyllum and Hylocereus in 'The Cactus Family' (Anderson 2001). Epiphyllum always has the stem tips flat; the floral tube is long, curved and very thin. Hylocereus has 3-angled stems (though I think they can throw some with 2 or 4 angles); the floral tube is relatively short and thick, almost absent in some species judging from the illustrations. So I would say Jancc's plants look more like Hylocereus. H. undatus in my experience will grow up trees or brick walls clinging by its roots like ivy, sometimes to heights of over 10 m. I don't think epiphyllums do anythging like that. Where I have seen E. oxypetalum it makes a multi-stemmed shrub about 1.5 m high, though maybe it can get a bit taller. As for 'epiphyllum hybrids', it's interesting to note what Anderson has to say: "One encounters numerous so-called epiphyllum hybrids, which in fact rarely involve species of Epiphyllum as a parent. Rather, these magnificent plants, bearing shimmering, iridescent flowers, are mostly hybrids of related genera such as Disocactus, Pseudorhipsalis, and Selenicereus."