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Can anyone help explain the mystery that is unfolding? I planted some grape hyacinths/muscari, oriental hyacinths and late flowering tulips in several different pots last Autumn. I limited each pot to a particular species and decided not to mix them up as I wanted a couple of blocks of plants and colours. I've noticed a very strange thing lately, while none of them have flowered yet, their leaves have emerged and I can see that I now have some muscari growing in the tulip and hyacinth pots, and tulips growing in the muscari pot!  :o The only thing that doesn't seem to be growing in a pot other than the one it has been planted in are the hyacinths!! Can anyone explain whether this is normal, and how on earth this could have happened? At the end of the day, there's no problem with them appearing in other plant pots, but I am very curious to know how indeed this is possible, as it is very interesting indeed!  ??? ???

rox are you sure you never mix the bulbs up by accident when planting . but last year  i bought some snake head Lillie's planted then and when it got to spring thought they have not flowered yet when they did flower they where alluims so sometimes even the manufactures get the product mixed up

Seeds maybe?  I don't dead head my bulbs so I do end up with seedlings around the parents.  Maybe the seeds have leapt from pot to pot.....or maybe someones idea of a joke??  ;D

Or a squirrel?  Our squirel has moved my bulbs around the pots and moved bulbs from pots to the border. I think he is wonderful but I do get a bit fed up of having my planting messed up by him. Makes me chuckle though.

lol I can just picture the scheming little squirrels face ;D

Another bulb question - I always life my tulip bulbs out of the pots and dry them, can I do the same with the crocus bulbs and narcissi bulbs?  I'll need the pots for my summer flowers once these are finished.

:)

Not sure what happened there  ???

I never lift my bulbs.  They flower year after year without trouble.  Next time round, I am going to buy some of that muscari.  It is such a pretty plant!
:D

thx everyone for all your comments!  ;D It seems indeed that the manufacturers have mixed up the species, such that what I thought were tulips in the muscari now appear to be a different species of muscari than the one I had planted, but muscari nonetheless  :D I just have to see whether the same thing has happened in the rest of the pots when the other bulbs reveal themselves  :D One final question on tulips in pots - twice the number of tulips have appeared in each pot I planted - is this normal  i.e., that one bulb can shoot up multiple flowers, or have they somehow multiplied themselves?  ???