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Last year, I purchased potted oxalis bulbs.

EDIT: Added picture of all cultivars enter image description here

I had five cultivars total: Three with small green leaves, one with large green leaves, and one with large purple leaves. All five have different flowers. They were all planted in a long pot to save space. They grew well and yielded many bulbs. I remember I harvested the bulbs from all five cultivars, and I stored them. No rotten bulbs were found as I replanted them the year after, so I assume all bulbs were alive at the time I replanted them.

To my amazement, only the species with the small green leaves came-out. No large green leaves, and no large purple leaves. Normally, sprouting failure would have been uniform, but not here. Clearly I overlooked something here. What could have selectively eliminated the two types I lost?

Christmas Snow
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    Do you have the botanical names of the varieties you planted? There are about 800 species of Oxalis.. What did the bulbs you saved look like (in terms of shape)? And when you say a 'long' pot, does that mean tall and narrow or wide and shallow? – Bamboo Nov 23 '21 at 11:41
  • They are actually hybrids. I added a photo of last year's bulbs. The purple one surely did not show-up. I think the one on the far left is also a variety with larger leaves and I got this year only the small-leaf varieties. – Christmas Snow Nov 23 '21 at 17:00
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    I don't recognise any of those hybrids - if they were potted when you bought them, its possible that only one of them grows from bulbs, and the others were fibrous rooted and only annuals, so the bulbs you stored might just have been from one of the plants. – Bamboo Nov 23 '21 at 18:32

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