Greetings all,

I am visiting my family in Florida where I left a H. papilio for the last six months. It has done very well with all of the sunshine and has become quite large and has two bulbils growing off of it. Also, it has become potbound in its 6" pot, so I plan to take it back north with me and repot it into a 10" pot like I have my other hippeastrums in.

So my question for you all is how do I force this bulb to bloom for me? I have a H. reginae that is showing a scape, and I would like this papilio to bloom after that bulb so I can obtain both crosses (I have a second papilio that is already well on its way to flowering, which will give me papilio x reginae). This is the only way I can get reginae x papilio this year. Do I reduce watering in the usual manner to induce a dormancy? I have read that H. papilio is evergreen - does this affect how dormancy should be induced? Should I do anything about the bulbils?

Also, some observations - 6" pots are too small for a fully developed root system. The roots were completely pot bound and coming out of the drainage hole. And good news - H. papilio is in fact immune to HMV, as well as the hybrid 'Half and Half.' Neither showed any signs of the virus despite being located in a area with large reservoirs of the virus and an abundance of insect vectors. This is the same location where I kept 'Red Lion,' 'Lemon Lime,' 'Sophisticate,' and 'Star of Holland,' which were all lost to the virus in May/June of this year.