Hybridizers: And so it begins..., 2 by pmmGarak

pmmGarak wrote:
Blooming season started for Nigella Damascena, Orientalis and Bucharica. castrating the first two is easy, bucharica hides it's anatomy a little bit more. One of my damascenas (pic, though color has not yet developed due to early flowering stage) seems to have a little mutation, making it far darker than any other I know, but not darker then what I've seen in catalogues before - still, that's one strain i will explore. I'll also select for somewhat frizzy petals - let's see if I can intensify them. It also has very reddish tint on the capsules. Damascenas make it easy to find the moment for polination, as they push down the tips of their female organs when ready. orientalis puzzles me, as the female parts always seem so far from any other part of the flower that I wonder how they'd ever be pollinated by insects. The Transformer selection seems to be very uniform, so I don't have much to select inside the species. As to cross polination: i tried, but it will take time to learn if I managed to do something, as I've read Nigella always developes the capsules, no matter if there's seed inside.
N. Hispanica and my Mulberry and Mars' Wedding Damascenas shall start flowering any day now - so I still have a lot of crosses to do.


January was a bit late for seeding, none of my "new" digitalis seems to be willing to flower, but my "old" D.Purpurea wants to make itself more interesting. I only had white flowers with dots for 2 years before, now this year I have both dotted purple and pure immaculate whites in addition to the white dotted ones - looks like I got some genes from surrounding gardens - I won't complain about that.