Hallson Gardens

I have a streaked seedling that has stabilized into a geren with a narrow white edge. IT is a nice plant, but not something I am dying to use in crosses. That said, I was thinking about it today as I was walking the garden, and it occurred to me that a streaker that settles to an edged form might still carry the genetics to produce streaky babies - a la Goddess of Athena.

What do you think? I have another streaky seedling I do like that is having an identity crisis and may end up stabilizing and I have been debating on using it for future crosses.


Alexa

Hi Alexa,

Goddess of Athena seems to be the exception to the rule. With what little knowledge I have about it, there are basically two courses to use a streaky seedling. One is to use it as a breeder to produce more streaky seedlings and the second is to allow it to stabalize into an edge or medio varigated plant. With that being said, the chances of it producing streaky kids once it has stabalized are probably no different than any other plant in the garden. Again, another exception would be if it had a dormant bud that hadn't stabalized yet and sends up a scape. As far as your streaker with an identity crisis, you could divide it to keep part of it streaky and allow the remainder to stabalize. Another assessment I have made from my own experience is that if you like the form but it lacks substance or you like this trait and not that, etc. keep in mind that all these problems become goals and you can plan your crosses to correct these. If you start out with a plant that has more of the charactoristics you are looking for you can eliminate some generations of crossing to achieve the end result you are looking for. Most of your results will be a chance or numbers game to get your end result. If it were as easy as crossing A with B to get C we would have probably exhausted the possibilities of new hostas by now with the number of hybridizers working at it. When I was quite young (and working with farm animals instead of plants), my dad explained it to me this way: He said he was going to cross a bulldog with a greyhound and get the fightenest, fastest dog there was, but he ended up with a dog that ran like a bulldog and fought like a greyhound . Another thing to watch for is if the plant sends up a streaky scape and produces streaked pods, the chances of streaky kids increases. I have a streaked plant of my own that last year sent up two scapes, one streaky and one solid green. To look at the plant it didn't appear that one eye of the plant was more or less streaked than the other. When I germmed the seed, the streaky scaped portion produced about 4 times as many streaky seedlings as the solid, although I got some streaks from it also using the same pollen on both. Didn't mean to get long winded here and I hope someone else chimes in --just because I'm doing some crossing doesn't mean I know what I'm doing .



Good luck and keep us informed.

All your points are well made. Mike!

Speaking of Goddess of Athena, I bought it 3 years ago just for those seeds. Must be some kind of dud for it produces many seeds but seedlings are all green. Anyone have any luck with this one?

I don't have the plant Mary Ann so no help there. I would keep trying tho because others have had luck with it. I would guess that it is entirely possible that you have a "dud" but the next batch of seeds could have some streakers in it .

Good luck!

I have it and it bloomed for the first time last year, but I never bothered to collect seeds, I was just too busy. I will give it a try this year though.

Thanks for all the info, Mike!

Alexa