And so it begins...

Those are beautiful Martin, I don't think that's a small step at all. Good luck with the crosses, I sure hope they took also.

Oh how interesting. What are the genetics/causes of "quads"?
So I got kind of interested in your Tigridias, and googled them, getting into the Pacific Bulb Society website. What an amazing website. I had no idea there were so many Tigridia species, and some look a bit like irises with the petals and sepals both being of large size.
One I liked especially, from Cloud Forests in Mexico- Tigridia orthantha, it survives in San Francisco. I wonder about Seattle (seems unlikely but maybe if crossed with one of the high altitude species?
I looked up the T. Vanhouttei. Sure looks (and smells I guess) like a fly-attracting flower! I have always found speckled flowers interesting, had some speckled Tigridias once, I think yellow with maroon speckles. There are two series of photos there, one of some seed-grown T. v, where there are large sepals and petals, but the wild photographed ones do not do this, so there is apparently a lot of variability there. Be sure to give us photos when yours bloom.


This message was edited Aug 2, 2016 11:16 AM

Hi Pistil,

as you might have guessed, I'm already a PBS member - that bulb photo of T. vanhouttei is from me. T. Orthantha is definitely on my list, though I already had to learn they are not as tolerant of being lifted as T. pavonia, T. vanhouttei and Cypella herbertii (Tribus Tigridieae as well, pic 3 - I must admit that since all Tigridieae look extremely similar besides their flowers, I really don't know how the genus borders were defined - and the professionals don't seem to know either, because they're constantly restructuring, killing off Rigidella, Sessilanthera, Fosteriana and parts of Collima, dropping all into Tigridia), my seedlings didn't come back from dormancy. Molseed wrote all Tigridias can be kept from going dormant until the first flowering, so i'll put my next batch of seedlings under lights next winter.

I've now had my first T.vanhouttei of this year, and from a bulb that didn't flower before (I have 4 individuals with buds this year), and to my surprise it (pic1) looks quite different than last years flowers (pic2), as it is darker, more defined on the inner petals, and more pointed on all petals. As they are all in the same pot, I'll soon see if it's genetic or environmental.

I'm not sure if I can transfer that knowledge to Tigridias, but on the daylilly forum is a thread about 8-petaled flowers - they call them polys - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1399983/ and in daylillies it seems partly genetic and more likely on the first flower - the plant that started with 2x4 petals had normal 2x3 forms on its next bloom - still even if it's just partly genetics, its likely that the likelyhood can be improved...

As last pics I've included Digitalis canariensis, which opened a few weeks ago, just before the last other digitalis species ended, so I tried a few crosses.

Hi Martin, sorry I did not get back to you, I was working a lot and just surfing a bit in the forums, forgot to get back to this thread, which I really enjoy.
Anyway what kind of light setup do you have for overwintering. This year I got myself a present- a stand and some 4 foot lights. It was too late for starting seeds this spring, but I will get it all set up for the fall.
The D. canariensis is really beautiful and interesting- a parent of the Digitalis (aka Digiplexis) 'Illumination Flame" which I tried repeatedly, with no success. Plants from the Canary Islands never survive here. I should have known better!

Hi Pistil,

my overwintering setup isn't very sophisticated: That Digitalis canariensis will pass winter in my sister's winter-garden - it's the only one that flowered, my other plants, some in the unheated side building the former owner used as a stone mason's atelier (I'm still surprised they survived), and one in a cool (~12°C ) chamber inside the house under LED lights just seem to lack the size. That small chamber, which really is a small addition to the house done in the 1930ies when a toilet was added to the 1899 basic design, will also shelter the T.Orthantha and, in case of hard frosts threatening the unheated atelier, the ferraria seedlings.
Those plants that can have it warm will actually find their place here beside my computer desk, once again under LED lighting.
I might have to add another lighted space in the basement (8-9 °C) - depends on how cold it gets and wether i have to quarantine things - I guess spider mites are everyone's winter nemesis...

by the way: those T. vanhouttei really have some variation in their flower shape and coloration, even in the same pot, so i'll definitely grow a "next generation" both of selfed and crossed pollination. They are really marvellous: with only 4 flowering plants i now have between 3 and 7 flowers each day - I need a whole plasterer's pot of T. pavonia to rival that frequency!

This message was edited Aug 16, 2016 9:06 PM

one of my later Tigridias showed a little mutation: Anthers and style are usually joined to form a central column, but not in this individual. While this isn't a spectacular change, it could be a first step towards a double, as the extra "petals" in doubles are often transformed anthers. I'm not sure if this will work as a pod parent, since the very thin style was never constructed to carry itself without the anther's support.

Not much to report in these winter days - I have a few more digitalis seedlings that seem to be intermediates - some of them still in the house, some enduring what was the coldest night of this winter so far outside - -7°C should be no problem for anything besides those containing d. obscura - all D. canariensis-seedlings of which i haven't decided wether they are hybrids or not are of course in the house. I'm still waiting for my lutea/purpurea hybrid to flower, seems all the digitalis take 2 years to flower if I sow tem in late summer when the seed is ripe.

The photo shows one Nigella damascena which sneaked into a hibernating pot plant - I have stopped to try to make indoor generations of those as they always stay small and fragile - but with the LED-Lighting they definitely make interesting photo models...

Happy New Year!
The Nigella is such an interesting, complex flower perfectly captured in that photo.

Hi Martin,

Nice photos. Digitalis do have some interesting bloom forms. I can see the attraction.

I just noticed that the "Next photo" mechanism now seems to be broken. With reference to your message on Jan 9, 2015, normally you can hit "Next photo" until you get back to the original starting point, at which point you can hit "Back too post" or "Next post" again. But now "Next photo" ceases to work after your third photo. Apparently some modification to the Dave's Garden software has introduced this bug as a side effect. You might want to hit Contact below to report this malfunction. Unless, somehow, the problem just seems to occur on old messages like the one in question.

ZM

This message was edited Jan 3, 2017 5:52 PM

Another minor excurse - I think I've noticed another effect of the LED-Lighting on my Digitalis canariensis: Pic one shows the color of one specimen flowering in summer under natural light - but now one started flowering under LED-Lights in the hibernation chamber, and it looks totally different (pic2) - it's not the same plant, but I've never heard of a purple D.Canariensis with no Purpurea crossed in and the palnt is from the original seeds, not from my own collected ones. I think there is a purple tinge on the summer form as well, so it could be that the carotinoid for the usual orange doesn't develop under the LEDs - so that's one thing we all should keep in mind when judging on winter grown specimen...

Pic 3 and especially 4 show that both of the Lutea/Purpurea hybrids have had more problems with winter and maybe with our extremely dry spring this year than their parents - still hoping for them to flower this year.

So finally my first homemade interspecific hybrid Digitalis is flowering - the variegated lutea x purpurea. I don't actually think random passers-by will notice it as something special, but for me it is of course. The plant seems rather weak to me, I definitely hoped for more hybrid vigor. In Digitalis it's said that flower form of hybrids is dominated by the seed parent, so Lutea x purpurea should be different to purpurea x lutea. My hybrid flowers generally resemble the seed parent (see comparison on pic 3) but are somewhat paler, slightly wider and a little big bigger, though far from purpurea size. most obvious sign of purpurea is, besides the hairiness of the leaves, the few random purple spots inside the flowers. Pollen parent was a whitish purpurea, so there's none of that purplish tinge mentioned in literature for that cross. maybe I should try to repeat this with the bright purple purpurea i've grown from a forest site nearby - don't know if the parent was a true wild form or a garden escape, but the color is strong in that one ;-)

I have another plant which i'm quite sure to be a hybrid, i'll report when I can be sure - that is when the flowers open...

Hi Martin,

So, are those pictures of the white one the pictures of your homemade interspecific hybrid? Do you expect it to produce fertile seed? "Interspecific" always raises the question of chromosome numbers and fertility, or the lack thereof.

It would be nice if we could view your pictures "full size". I notice that Dave's Garden seems to re-size your pictures to 708 pixels wide. That's not too bad for your first picture, which is a tall portrait format, but the other pictures aren't shown as well. The 708 pixel-wide resize seems to be a Dave's Garden standard practice. I get the impression that you uploaded pictures that were 800 pixels wide, and they got resized to the DG standard 708 pixels. My camera (Nikon D3200) takes pictures that are 6016 x 4000 pixels and I process, crop, and resize them to 1000 x 800 for internet display. When I upload a 1000-pixel wide photo here, it gets downsized to the "standard" 708 pixels wide. (I just uploaded a 1000-pixel sample) I could wish that Dave's Garden allowed the viewer to see the 1000-pixel wide version, because most computer monitors can show that easily (maybe not as much for "smart phones").

I much prefer the photo system that the National Gardening Association uses. NGA embeds a large square thumbnail or thumbnails in the message text, which can be clicked on to see the photo "full size". Their thumbnails are 248 x 248 pixels, as compared to the 100 x 100 pixels here.

ZM

Well, actually i'm fine with the image quality - you can still see the hair on the lip in the flower closeup - which is a lutea-feature by the way. My native camera resolution is 4896 x 3264, 16 MP, on my Fuji XT10 - Sensor should be about the same geometric size as yours, but I personally feel higher formal Megapixels would only demonstrate the physical limits of the optics and lighting.you can see and get the full sized close-up on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/150325868@N06/34538887603/in/dateposted-public/), which is what I use if I want to share full resoution photos. Trouble with full resolution is: you can see Iso 2000 (--> Noise) and my not too steady hand at 1/80s. Sometimes the downscaling of Dave's has got its benefits ;)

All Digitalis species (well, those I've found up to now) have 2n=56 chromosomes, so that's not the point regarding fertility. But i've read most are sterile, besides of course the "Strawberry Foxglove", which is a tetraploid hybrid of Grandiflora and Purpurea - I'll try anyway, any seed from those plants will be worth a try, and I'll smear whatever digitalis pollen I can find on those, back-cross or out-cross, you never know...

One thing we shouldn't forget is that "species" and "genus" are very human constructs, and while there are plants where you can hardly hybridize subspecies, others seem to have never heard of barriers - take amaryllids as an example - Amaryllis Beladonna seems to happily hybridize with Nerine, Crinum and Brunsvigia, ant those aren't even all in one Subtribe... I think it always depends on what triggered the difference in evolution - if populations were merely geographically isolated or changed something about the flowers to appeal to completely different polinators, or splited by a change of flowering time, we'll have better chancesto hybridize than with those which changed "invisible" things like certain enzymatic processes.

As I promised, I have another Digitalis hybrid to present, 3 siblings to be precise, though I'm not exactly sure about the parents - candidates are in pic 4. Seed parent is definitely D. grandiflora (right), but for pollen parent I have two closely related ideas: Digitalis ferruginea on top left, D. lanata on bottom left. Basically everything that sets the hybrids apart from grandiflora could be from both: Flowers have a pronounced lower lip, a more intense netting than grandiflora, are more open and more vertical in their orientation, and the tip of the stem doesn't bend down as much. To make it more chaotic, I even tend to think that pic 1 and 3 are half lanata, and pic 2 is half ferruginea, as it has a darker lower lip and, not easy to see in the picture, slightly darker and less hairy leaves.

Anyway, no matter who the parents are, I really like this one, as i find the honeyish color scheme, the nice pattern and the overall form of the flowers quite pleasing. I think there's some hybrid vigor involved, as the flowers are slightly bigger than gradiflora (don't get tricked by that name, purpurea-flowers are far bigger than those), even though both potential pollen parents would be considerably smaller.

Hi Martin,

Apparently the pictures somehow didn't appear when I first viewed your message. But now they show up just fine. I don't know if that was a hiccup from the forum, or from my newly updated Firefox browser.

ZM


This message was edited Jun 21, 2017 7:28 AM

Hi Martin...thanks. I have learned quite a bit from you and I so appreciate your lessons.

I think another subject of selection has chosen me: three years ago, I started Antirrhinum siculum (pic1), and by chance, a single seedling of the common Antirrhinum majus came up with them (pic2). Now, after my last nasty winter, all the parents gave up, and all new seedlings spreading proved to be antirrhinum majus. But besides the things I expected, like color separation of the tricolor parent and additional colors dragged in from surrounding populations (e.g. pic 3), I have now 2 plants with a net pattern on the upper lip (4,5) - i've never seen that before in a snapdragon - all patterns I know are broken colors, no distinctive netting. I think I like the feature and will try to make a selection for that effect. And after it is stable, I might try to transfer it from the low growing form it has now, to the elegant high growing forms...

a sidenote: the Digitalis Grandiflora/lanata cross seems to be exceptionally easy - i have another 4 plants of those in flower now. this may increase the chance to get fertile seed from them...

This message was edited Jul 17, 2017 7:37 PM

Beautiful Martin, I really like the netting.

Hi Martin,

I like that feature too, and although I am no expert on snapdragons, I don't recall seeing that in any commercial snap.

I probably would not be as methodical as you, and I would grow some good commercial snaps now, including the tall ones and the unusual flower forms, and cross your netted ones on them. It would help if you had a lot of room to grow snaps and could grow hundreds of them. Anyway, I approve of what you are doing with snaps -- they have a great variety of commercial colors, flower forms, and plant habits to work with, so the possibilities are almost unlimited with snaps if they grow well in your climate. Apparently Kansas is too hot for them.

I am attaching a photo of a current Whirligig zinnia that has a repeat of the tip color at the petal base (or vice versa). That's somewhat unusual. I don't mean to hijack your thread for my zinnias though.

ZM

this is another report out of the category "things that happened on the way" - I tried to cross two of my (quite common) Hemerocalis cultivars - parents were the well known bicolor "Frans Hals" (pic1, seed parent) and a darker red one I don't remember the name (pic 2, pollen). I have about 15 seedlings, but only 2 seem to be flowering this year (Second from seed) The first one (pic 3) is rather boring - something like a low-stem, well-behaved fulva i will likely get rid of, but the second one (pic4) is a keeper for me: It's about the color of the pollen parent, but has very clear and distinct yellow center lines on the petals. I really hoped the bicolor would show, but there are still a lot more plants to hope for next season. I don't think i want to dive too deep in hemerocallis as that's a somewhat beaten path.