Sterile culture of excised daffodil tissue, Narcissvs triandrgs L. cz. Thalia, was attempted on 12 media. Callus tissue and bulbets formed by differentiation of callus tissue proliferated only on media of high auxin levels. Evidence of alkaloid production by these cultures was obtained. Callus tissues growing on sterile media have provided experimental materials for many fundamental and applied investigations of higher plants. Somatic tissue from a wide variety of dicotyledonous plants have been grown iv vitro as callus, but most attempts to culture comparable tissues from Inonocotyledonous plants have been unsuccessful. With the recent reports of in ?vitro culture of somatic wheat callus tissue (1 ) and of sugar cane cells (2) ¢nly a few successful reports of previously cultured monocotyledonous tissues other than endosperm are available. The present communication deocribe3 a n.etllod for c)btaining callus cultures of daffodil tissue and preliminary investigations of its metabolic capabilities. Commercial (3) bulbs of Nczrciss triandAs L. cv. Thalia were vernalized fcor six weeks at 4°C. The bulbs were peeled of excess scales, surface sterilized with saturated calcium hypochlorite solution, rinsed three times with sterile distilled water, cut into pieces of approximately one gram weight and implanted on the selected medium. Twelve modiScations of the medium described by Murashige and Skoog (At) were tested. The medium selected for maintenance of the cultures was Murashige and Skoog's basal medium with 10 mg per liter of naphthalene acetic acid, 1 mg per liter of kinetin and 1 mg per liter of gibberellic acid. Variations consisted of changing the ratios of auxin (both naphthalene acetic acid and indole acetic acid) to kinetin and the addition of gibberellic acid and casein hydrolysate (both enzymatic and acid hydrolyzed). The cultures were grown at 27° in the dark in 125 Erlenmeyer flasks containing approximately 50 ml of agar medium. These were initially observed for growth and subcultured to fresh media when two to three fold growth had occurred. A comparison of the times Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, Vol. 74, No. 1, 1971. Published January 7, 1972. 1 This srork was supported in part by funds provided to the University of Kansas by the National Institutes of Health Biomedical Sciences Support Grant.