Hello Salpal! Welcome and thanks for joining us here. Yes we are very lucky and proud of everybody (from newbies to experts)that has shared their knowledge, experiences views and opinions in this forum all contributing to it's success.

Hopefully someday, with the help of this forum, the American Amaryllis Society can be revived. I honestly believe that lack of information available to the public about this plant genus lead to it's fall. That is what this forum is aiming for...education.

Please do "join" us more often. We would love to hear from you. :-)

mariava can you tell me more about the American Amaryllis Society and how we can revive it?

Hello and Welcome, Salpal!! I'm fairly new here, myself, and I agree that this forum is chock full of excellent information, interesting conversations and great flower photos! It's also made up of the nicest people! Do join us! :-)

Maria - I'd certainly be willing to become a member of the American Amaryllis Society... how can we revive it? Do tell us more!

Looking forward to hearing more from you, Salpal, about your gardening! As a fellow notherner, I know what it's like to be stuck indoors all winter... and to try to get the most out of the time we do have outdoors! Hippis are just the thing for us, though... all we need is a few east or south windows, perhaps a grow light or two, and we're back in the green!

I'm with Maria... we'd all love to hear from you, and perhaps view a photo or two of your plants! (hint, hint!)

OMG...I really have no idea on what to answer to your questions. What I know is that there used to be an American Amaryllis Society. Then something went wrong I guess and it banished.

Anybody out there know what happened? I asked Houstonpat about it in the other thread about Papilio having another scape. Let's wait for his reply if no one responds here.

Ok. I did a search in the forum about AAS cause I know somewhere, sometime this was talked about here. Here is Raydio's explanation. Raydio, aren't you going to join us here anymore? We miss you...

Raydio said: "What's more is that the American Amaryllis Society is no longer in existence and was the US and international registry for hybrids. In 1989,the AAS became the International Bulb Society and in September 1990, the Dutch had taken over the old records of the AAS and became the international registry for Hippeastrums."

Sounds like we have the option of joining the International Bulb Society... that's too bad about the AAS, though... I would join that... but the IBS is not just Hippis. :-(

Exactly. Bulbs are bulbs. I am not too crazy about everything that comes out of bulbs. I like them, but I have a passion for Amaryllis (Hippeastrum), so joining American Amaryllis Society would have meaning.

We don't even have an "American Bulb Society". If I understand or read this correctly there are 2 seperate bulb societies in US. One is the Pacific Bulb Society and Great Lakes Bulb Society. And you don't get much info on hippeastrums from them.
It's also a pity that all the records of AAS were transferred to IBS and you cannot access them unless you are a member. Now that I think is very WRONG! Horticultural societies are organized mainly for maintaining a good source of information about plants to educate people. Since they are non-profit, these infos should be free. IBS apparently wants you to pay first before you can read.

Here's another link that shows the transformation of AAS to IBS.

http://216.247.182.213/ABOUT_IBS/HISTORY_OF_IBS/history.html

Yes, and although I do like other bulbs, it is the Hippeastrum that I want to devote my time to... learning, growing, breeding, collecting, sharing... it would be nice to belong to a group, or society, that is devoted to the one bulb.

We could, actually, start our own Hippeastrum Society... I don't know exactly what it would take, what is involved in starting a National Club... or is there already one that we are not aware of?

I started with tulips. I love tulips. I buy them regularly and I would plant them regularly, but they are extremely short lived in California, so I slowly discovered amarylli that can be grown year round and can be forced year round. Of course I opted for it. And maybe there is a need in me to collect as many as I can because my mother had like 3 varieties that she could not bring to flower most of the time. I just want to be more successful than her maybe? It works. :o)

I like all bulbs... from allium to zepheranthes, and everything in between... I grow most of them in the gardens, and every year we buy a few more varieties... but there's something special about a bulb that you wait all year, with anticipation, to see bloom, and those blooms are so huge and unbelievably gorgeous... and while the one Minerva was enough for a while, the different colors and shapes available are too beautiful to NOT collect!

Collecting is for people like me who suffer (or enjoy) OCD, or have no other things to do, than tend the garden. :o) I feel like a professional collector, and I refused to give answers to questions asking about my hobby before. Now I can say I have three hobbies. Amaryllis, International musicals, and Toto. I plunged into two of them unintentionally. Buying Toto was intentional. I take full credit for that.

I will have to get checked for OCD, then! This is the second hobby I seem to have little control over! You should see my bead collection!!

Check for OCD. Fortunately, mine is quite mild... It seems to improve my lifestyle and life condition. Only a few times it gets out of hand and gets destructive, like spending all that money on bulbs and drive around day after day to find new ones, or order the newest release of The Phantom of the Opera's Japanese version for $40+shipping from Japan and stuff like this... Sometimes I feel like I will never be able to grow up. I will always have these childish things that I enjoy or just HAVE TO do.

That's not so bad... my husband just ordered the full DVD set of the Squidbillies cartoons! And he has to watch every MMA event on tv... and he never misses the Japanese anime on Cartoon Network every night... I think everybody has a certain quirk, or quirks, that they have to satisfy... I don't think a person really has to grow up 100%... what fun would that be?!

I always wanted to be a grown up. And now I have to realize that it will never happen. Maybe that is why kids love me so much. I can handle kids so well, and I don't even know what I do to them, but they just become good kids around me... And the interesting thing is, that I am not much "into" kids... I mean I like kids, but I like them when they are not my responsibility. :o)

I never used to have patience with children... especially poorly behaved ones... and I know I could have been a more patient and understanding step mother to my kids as they were growing up... now that I have grandkids, I don't quite know how, but I am fabulous with them and they love me! I have a lot more patience, and I'm a lot more relaxed with them... maybe it's because I had no experience with children when I got mine, and even though I loved them, I didn't know how to handle them... I didn't have them as babies... I don't know... I'm just very glad my kids turned out so great, and that they are now giving me grandbabies to love!!

Welcome salpal, glad you came out of lurking. I think all of us have been lurkers in the past. I spend a lot of time on the Florida Gardening forum. I love Passiflora, Herbs and Veggies & Fruits. I grow a number of orchids and Plumerias as well as many more tropicals. I am into Butterfly feeding and breeding. In the winter, The Amaryllis Forum is my home. I've learned so much here. I have cross bred a number of varieties and have lots of different seedlings. There is something serene and majestic yet exciting about growing and breeding Amaryllis and I can't get enough. This is a great forum and I am so happy to be a part of it! I love my friends here like family. Welcome aboard!

Amen, Cindee! This is a great group of people! You'd have a hard time finding a nicer, more helpful crowd, I guarantee! I'm also glad to be a part of it... it's my home away from home, so to speak! I come here every morning with my cup of coffee, read everyones' posts from the evening before... gain a little knowledge, share a tidbit of knowledge... and hope that someone posted new flower pictures to drool over!

C'mon... join in! :-)

Yes. Flower pictures. These new or old varieties look different when they bloom in your own room. They do not always look the same as the pictures on the sites they are sold on. I always like to compare. And I am amazed sometimes, that different crops from different years can show variance within the same kind of hybrids.