Alistair's seedlings

Here are the 11 seedlings from Alistair's seeds (a cross between Alphonse Mucha and Bruce’s Pink) that were sown last May. They're the ones growing in the grey buckets in the front of the bed. I don't think they'll manage to flower before winter. They've done it rather tough, having to weather three hailstorms, one of them very severe. I try to give them a bucket of water each, twice a week, with liquid fertiliser when I remember. (I added a lot of fertiliser to the pots when planting them too.) And I keep squashing those ladybirds with 20+ spots, which seem to love brugs even more than the caterpillars if that's possible ...

Just to confuse matters, there's a Dr Seuss brug peeping through on the left-hand side of the photo (it's the one with serrated leaves) plus a large brug aurea in the main bed behind the row of seedlings.

This message was edited Feb 12, 2009 10:30 AM

They look very healthy! Are they in 8" pots?

They're in 11L buckets, so 8-inch pots are probably a close approximation. It's not a permanent planting, just somewhere to keep them growing until I can choose the best ones to propagate from.

I've found this cross generally gets very tall indeed before they flower! I have only flowered a couple, one with lovely shape but washed out (pink) colour. I had to cut the rest down as they were hard up against the top of my shade house without having Y-ed! I have a nasty feeling they will just go up to the roof again!!

Ah, maybe I could use one of them in place of my non-germinating arborea ... I wanted a scented brug that would reach up to my east-facing second-level bedroom (which is lower than an average second storey in a house down south), so that I could smell the scent through my window. And provide shade from the morning sun in spring and summer. I thought the arborea was the only one that would grow that high.

Cestrum ,where did you get the Dr Suess from? is it a seedling cross with something else? I feel for you guys doing it tough re watering,we have plentiful (not bragging) and the Angels sure do like it.

Actually, Alistair identified it as Dr Seuss from my photos of it on Ausgarden. For the life of me I can't remember where I got it from--whether it was from one of the local garden club festivals, ebay, or a plant swap. Terrible, isn't it? Esp. as I like to keep a record of such things.

The flowers are pretty but quite fragile in the heat--closer to the suaveolens in this respect than my Golden Butter, which keeps its shape in the heat. They take on an orange hue in colder weather, and there's very little perfume. (Maybe it's only a Dr Seuss seedling?) But the serrated leaves are lovely. I gave a cutting to a friend and was taken aback by the beauty of her plant, which looks like it could be grown purely for its foliage, the leaves are so pretty.

Yes the ID is a bit tentative....... :)

How did Dr Suess get in the country? or should I say,who smuggled him in?

The fault's mine for not describing it properly. Perhaps safest to say it's a Dr Seuss hybrid? Those leaves are so distinctive ... but I guess there are other brugs with the same type of foliage?

Maya, if it was smuggled in, it wasn't done by me! (I've only imported seeds.) While I can't remember where it came from, I do know it can't have been named. It must have had some description, but I think it was probably 'yellow'. In fact, another one of my 'yellows' languished for at least a year (maybe two; I've lost track) in a tough spot before I transplanted it to a bucket of good soil and regular watering, and the new foliage and especially that brownish velvety new growth looks suspiciously like my Golden Butter. We'll see when it flowers.