First flowers of Platycodon Blue X Fujishibori. The two flowers of the F1's are two separate plants. It's really windy today so all the JMG's are tearing. I was really hoping for some speckling.
The one on the left has more of the Platy form and the one on the right the Fuji form. The colors are pretty much a mixture of both.
Something else I just noticed .. the one on the left has a 5 point star and the one on the right a 6 point star!
Anne,
You may get speckling in the next generations, this F1 is carrying the speckled gene. It will be interesting to see future generations. Although, I really like the fullness and roundness of your F1s.. Great Job by the way!
A.
i love the color awesome
Thanks .. I like the colors too and the patterns.
Very nice indeed! Good work crossing those two. I agree with Antoinette that you may very well get speckles from any seeds you collect from either vine. That's what I love about these plants ... you never know what you are going to get until you grow them out! Often a nice surprise!
Thanks .. I thought it would be very interesting to see what would happen between the two with the flower form being so different. I wasn't disappointed in that respect!
X,
Your cross has created something very nice! I wonder if it will stabilize and come true eventually? I hope you continue growing out any seeds you get from the F1, F2, F3, etc. vines! Please keep us posted. :-)
X, am I correct to assume that you used Dracula to cross with Fuji Shibori? It is okay to use the name I gave it, just as you would any other names, Just use I. nil platycodon Dracula. That way we know which are the parents.
Yes, that's the one ... I'd love to stabilize this one for sure! It hasn't bloomed again yet so I'm keeping my fingers crossed
Yeah, those colors are unmistakable. That is the only one that has those shades of blue and red... good going there. Very nice bigger flowers and hopefully longer vines too. It would be great to see some specks come out, maybe in the F2s or further along into the next generations. How long is the vine now? It will be interesting to see how long it gets at the end of it's life cycle too.
It's less than a foot high .. so far this has been a very strange year for mg plant growth .. even the shidare isn't really growing and still upright .. they all have a lot of buds but no length. They've been fed twice .. I moved all the mg's to an area that gets morning sun then shade after 1pm and even when they were in the sun all day, the blooms on some were hanging around til the next day with temperatures in the high 80's. I'm hoping things will pick up once the nights get into the mid to upper 60's and the soil temperatures warm up. We've had a significant cool down the last two nights with lows in the upper 40's to low 50's.
First F2 of the season .. looks like a very dilute version of the F1. There are two other F2 plants that haven't bloomed yet. Being the first flower I'm thinking subsequent flowers will be less dilute.
Interesting offspring X. Anxious to see the other F2 blooms.
I have never seen this before. Noticed the flower a few hours after I took the first picture and saw that parts of the petals were becoming translucent .. I have seen that before, but a few more hours later when I looked at it I was stopped in my tracks! The symmetry is astonishing! I gotta think about this for awhile. The flower started out with the Fuji (the petals are curled but the flower is definitely round) form and aged into the Platy form!
You can go here to see a 5 meg picture for a closer look:
http://www.nerii.org/Ron/Platy-Blue_x_Fujishibori_F2_5-6-12_pm.jpg
It morphed into an even more beautiful flower X.
Xeramtheum, that flower reminds me of washi — the traditional paper used in various ways in Japan. It's an incredibly beautiful flower!
Thanks! Can't wait for the next one to open to see if it happens again or if this was just a one time thing.
X, this one - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=9112883 - seems so reminiscent of the snowflake pattern seen on petal edges of Primula sieboldii - so amazing how MGs can mimic other flowers - thank you for keeping us posted on results of your cross.
I'm happy to say that this kind of morphing is consistent! It's happening to every flower that opens so far - the fact they start out solid and round then morph and shrink into the 5 sided form is astonishing! I have to wonder if there is a consistent mixture of Platy/Fuji cells in the petals and the Fuji cells are not as robust thus decay quicker leaving the Platy cells intact!
X, I am no scientist, but I seem to recall, that for the sake of discussion, that the cell is the plant; that is, it's the smallest unit a plant can be divided into, where each basic unit (or cell) has the same genes as each other and the whole plant.
clear as mud, huh? I'm writing this so anyone can follow our speculations, so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm getting too silly with simplifications -
Anyhoo, it's within the cells that the boss and his/her messengers run things. With many exceptions, a major part of the boss sits within the chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell, with offices all up and down those intertwined strands of DNA, and from there he/she conducts business via messengers that run back and forth between boss inside the nucleus and cell parts outside the nucleus, telling said cell parts what to do.
These messengers are called enzymes and they relay the orders for what kind of color or shape or pattern etc. a flower might ultimately take (among other things).
So, I'm envisioning a part Fuji/part platycodon-MG boss directing the blossoming and aging of the flower from his/her throne in the chromosomes, following the linear pattern of time from dawn to afternoon of each flower, in a set order from Fuji-shape at dawn to platycodon-MG-shape at the flower's expiration by the end of the day.
It's not for nothing that enzymes have been compared to the messengers of the gods - in this case, maybe we could say Kronos (Chronos?).
disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about and hope everyone jumps in here with wherever you may be on the spectrum from fantasy to knowledge.
X - looking forward to wacha think
Actually that's pretty much what I was trying to say!
:)
This is what it looks like just opening .. the colors are more intense but once it opens they just kind of fade away.
very interesting, X. Those striations/bee lines seem to be calling out, "pollinate me" to local bees. Add a few teeth to that pink throat, and perhaps we could hear "feed me" a la Seymour's plant in Little Shop of Horrors - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Theatre/LittleShopOfHorrors?from=Main.LittleShopOfHorrors
hope I'm not the only one amused,
karen
Still, a very cool flower, X!
hope I'm not the only one amused
X, yes neat flower. Did you get your translucent border on this bloom as the day wore on?
Yes .. all the blooms are doing this! It's still early enough in the season to start more seeds, thinking of back crossing .. which would you back cross to, the Fuji or Platy?
This message was edited May 14, 2012 6:28 AM
I would back cross to both in separate trials.
Actually that's not a bad idea .. I'll start both seeds today.
Great, we'll just be patient on this end.and give you plenty of time. :-)
X - looking forward to further developments very much
Nick - thank you, but I don't want to hijack X's thread
