Pretty pictures: Alstroemeria cvv.

I was sort of shocked to see these for sale at Lowe's in Cedar Rapids (red one) and Coralville (orange one), because . . . well, because I really love Alstroemerias as cut flowers (I have some particularly vivid positive memories involving them, plus they last a remarkably long time.), and it seemed like surely if people were growing them around here, I would have seen and noticed them a long time ago.


The other peculiar thing is that they must be selling them as annuals. A bit of random poking around at davesgarden.com turned up one variety that was supposedly hardy in zone 5b, and a half-dozen others that were only hardy to zone 7. Which, I don't know, if they were cheap enough and the flowers lasted as long as the grocery-store bunches of flowers, I could see it being worth the money to buy Alstroemerias every year. But I'm still kind of surprised. Anybody know if there truly are zone-5-hardy Alstroemerias out there? As it is I'm inclined to think davesgarden.com was mistaken.