Snakes head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) top tip

i've just bought some of these bulbs and when looking for some info found a top tip on the bbc.co.uk/gardening site.
When you do grow them from bulbs there's a good way to get more plants out of your bulbs: lift the bulb out of the ground and score a little cross on the bottom. Put that in upside down and it'll produce four or five little plantlets where you've scored and crossed - so you'll get five little plants from every single bulb. i'll be trying this one!

Lilith, dont do it on all because this sets the bulbs back and they wont all flower. instead they put their energy into making bulbils instead of flowers. it will be about 3 years before the bulbils come of age to flower.

Mark

I read that somewhere too Lil,was curious'
I've never done it though.Thanks Mark,now
I know I won't''' Sis'

thanks for the warning mark - i'm glad you replied so quick, i was going to do it this weekend! do you know how long they take to spread?

from seed they get to flowering size in about 3 years which is about the same as forcing the bulb to make bulbils. are the bulbs cheap over there? we get 10 for about a $1.50

Mark

i got 10 for 80p in the market in durham.. thought that was a great deal! they didn't have many left so i'll try next saturday.