This year's babies

[waldo]

It has been a little slow on here, so I thought that I would post some pictures of some interesting (hopefully) seedlings that I have. My primary goal is flower improvement, color and size and that doesn't give a lot of seedlings that make for pic's on forums. That is the down side to breeding for flower characteristics mostly "just plain green plants" and years until you can see progress if any, unlike breeding for variegation where a percentage can be culled early on. Anyway I have a couple of pictures of a Beet Salad X Violetta cross that has the Beet Salad edge on the leaf, by that I mean the red line the whole way around the leaf.

[Chris_W]

That's a nice goal - I really enjoy interesting hosta flowers and have selected a couple plants of my own only because of the nice flowers.

I wonder if that red edge is only on the new growth and will disappear later in the season. Will be worth watching.

Have you considered using Tickled Pink in your efforts? That one has a lot of pink/purple around the leaves as they emerge and most notably on the tips (hence the name). It would also help help you to get a good yellow into your mix. Sadly I think a lot of the yellows out there now aren't all that garden worthy. Way too many of the newish ones burn up in too much sun or drought or rot away too easily. A lot of inbreeding for reds have resulted in plants that aren't disease resistant so we see a lot of petiole rot and fungal problems.

Good luck and have fun

Chris

[waldo]

Hi Chris, yes I have attempted to use Tickle Me Pink and haven't been able to get any seed set on my selected crosses. I am also attempting to use Lipstick Blonde in my breeding attempts,as both of these hostas show the red margin. Just as with First Blush a generous helping of sun and cooler temperatures help the red to display better. However too much sun can be a problem for some yellows. You are right the red edge does disappear later on in most if not all of these seedlings, that is why it is important to select and mark them while you can see it. I view it as an indicator that the plant displaying the red margin has more "red" than it's siblings (just a theory, not proven as yet). There are so many unknowns in the genetics that we just have to go with observation and theory sometimes.

[waldo]

Well I'm back again with pictures of the best First Blush seedling that came from a friend, he made the cross and then gave me some of the seeds. Clockwise from the top left, Friday April 5 then Sunday and the last two were taken today April 9. You can see how quickly the leaf color developed. Now if (and it is a big if) it doesn't disappear as quickly as it came.