Any ideas anyone? I bought this bulb over the Internet a year ago - right about this time. When is came, I surprised to see that it came from Iran. The grower was very nice and indicated it was the last Royal Velvet they had - which probably accounted for the fact that it was not actually one big bulb, but 1 smaller bulb with 3 fairly large bulbetts. The next surprise was that it did not come with the standard out-of-county agricultural declaration. The next surprise was that there was some soil on the bulb. Not quite sure what to do but wanting to take the chance of bringing some microbe or disease into the US, I scrubbed the bulb very clean in a bowl of bleach water, then added more bleach to the water before disposing of it, and let the bulb dry thoroughly before planting it in sterile soil. It did leaf out and seemed very healthy, but did not bloom, (not really a surprised since the bulb was small), then went dormant by early August, which is unusual for Ohio. I dug it up and put it in a cool place by September. Brought it back out and planted it in November. There are no roots at all yet. But the actual bulbs look healthy, with no sign of disease. One thing though, when I pulled some of the dried layers of "onion skin" off, they seem to have cotton-like fiberous strands holding them together - this does not look like a disease, but actually how the bulb layers are growing. So any ideas? Maybe coming from Iran, this bulb is on its' own schedule and not acclimated to the northern USA? Maybe my harsh bleach cleaning shocked it? Maybe Royal Velvet just takes forever to come out of dormancy?

Wow! What a fascinating history to this bulb. Perhaps none of the bulbs are large enough to bloom . The fact that it did put up leaves last spring, even after a fairly harsh cleaning is positive. The absence of roots is not necessarily negative. Half of the bulbs that I planted in Nov, haven't yet broken dormancy, so it just may need more time. I don't have a clue as to what the fiberous strands could be. Let it be, and see what happens.

Well, well, well! This bulb has been dormant for 2 YEARS now - 25 months. I really thought it was dead, but since the actual bulb (really a total of 3 bulbs) seemed firm and OK, I did not discard it. Kept it in the pot, brought it out to my patio with the rest of my Amaryllis, and watered it even though I was sure it was dead. Stuck my fingers down into the soil on several occasions, certain that the bulbs had turned mushy, only to find them still firm. And guess what? They are actually starting to FINALLY leaf out. Go Figure No idea what will happen next, but keeping my fingers crossed!

Great news!