MANY of these wonderful things have fallen from commerce here with the closure of the specialty nurseries. I'd sought Hugonis flore plena for the past two years. Every garden which grew it, lost it. Vintage supposedly had a mother plant and I offered to buy a sucker from it if they had one, but there was too much going on to hear back. It took two years, but there are buds of flore plena in a whip out front now. Originally, Xanthina was a double flower with the single version identified as Xanthina normalis or spontanea. I contacted every source asking about the petal count of their stock. All sources responded theirs were all single. Because the double form resulted from seed, I obtained imported Xanthina seed. I hope at least one of the seedlings out back flowers double. These things are worth growing, but most don't sell in sufficient quantities for most vendors to stock. Each is going to determine which sells best and is easiest for them to produce, then offer that one type. Good luck! I know what it's like to want something you just can't find. Kim

Hi Linda: I never thought of pesticides. Come to think of it I have not seen a ground hog, skunk, or racoon lately either. The ground hogs always attacked my swiss chard, and ate the apples which dropped from my tree. There are definitely no pesticides on my property and the neighbours on either side have small kids and work so they just plunk in a few annuals from the nursery each year. We live in the suburbs and there are a few farms nearby: mostly corn and strawberries. However, they have recently been bought out by a larger outfit and I wonder about their methods. I commented to neighbours recently that you don't see any worms in the corn, which were present when 'old Henry' ran the farm organically. I must investigate this more fully. I definitely have fewer bees, and I have seen several yellow jackets rather slow moving and listless. I get some butterflies attracted to my Blue Fortune, but that's about it. It really is sad. I must make an effort to check other parts of the neighbourhood. Thanks for your ideas.

Well, the head was a brown color and when I looked this up it says the 1st spring male is brown colored..so I guess I saw the young one...but it sure was breath taking..I'm hoping it will come back cause it was at the feeder twice...I never realized how neat it is to see all these beauties... I come back to Florida in Oct and stay till the end of June...and I can't wait to see what else will fly in ... Just awesome...What a beautiful gift of nature..and where I live as a "Snow Bird" is surrounded by huge oak trees.. If I see him again I have the camera ready and I'll post it.. Thank you so much ..God Bless BarbZeee

Hi. Thanks for responding. I've never seen a crow like that. That's pretty cool--but no, after I had a second look, I was relatively certain it wasn't a crow. Its tail was definitely not as round, though unfortunately, as time passes, the silhouette fades a bit from my memory. The white though, was a perfectly, clean, crisp band at the tip of it's tail. I didn't notice any other markings. I was walking down a path to a tennis court when I saw it. I stood staring at it, flying over head for a moment, and just when I was going to call to the other people in the class in the distance and say, "What is that?" they were all greeting me, and when I looked back up, it was gone, past the trees.