Joy In The Morning

The Bible says(there may be weeping for a night but there will be joy in the morning) Amen.

When i went to bed last night i had seen the buds for tommorrow start to open and i was anxious but there was Joy this morning. I had been seeing all the buds but not the flower so now i can put them together with a blue flag. I will show the flowers then descibe them, hopefully i can do this so please bear with me.

This is a Diploid seedling and the cross is ( lavender blue baby X Carribean Whipped Cream) X

(Edna Shaw x Lavender Blue Baby). This would be an F-1 cross or in our terms half brother and sister cross. Both parents(seedlings) had purple colored eyes and one had mauve colored petals and the other cream petals. This seedling has 26 buds, 3 branches plus the terminal Y some people call this 5 way branching. You judge what to call the branching. It is 6 inches with about 3 1/2 inch petals. This is the pink seedling above.

This seedling is a diploid with 4 branches plus terminal Y with bud count of 49. I counted 50 buds but just to be on the safe side i said 49. Just fantastic plant habit. It is what i call burgandy purple with purple(darker) eye. 6 inch flower with about 3 inch petals. I will show front and back side of plant so you may count branches and buds for yourself. The cross is (LBB seedling X CWC seedling). I hope pictures come out side by side. It came out on top sorry about that. I will attempt to post picture of back side of it.

These are first year bloomers meaning they didnt bloom last year. I have another picture of a purple seedling but i dont know where it will end up. Now for the Rest Of The Story from yesterday.

Selection is what hybridizing all about. Selection sets us All apart. That is the fun part of hybrizing is you can make it fun or serious and if you get off track in your breeding, lets say you lost your branching you can buy some plants that have great branching and put that plant habit back into your genetics just like you can loose something if in your selection you allow it to dissapear. The branching you see in these pictures is all over the garden in our seedlings and not just a couple plants. But it has taken us 12 years of careful selection to get here. I can loose it in one year if i want to breed it out by selecting just the flower and no branching. My plants have been tested in a garden in Ohio for a few winters and most of my seedlings are dormant or very hardy. Not only do we have great branching but the plants are very large so they will support a big scape. I took the tape measure out to the scapes the other day and there are lots of scapes 32- 34 inches tall and have thick scapes to support lots of buds and big flowers. For years i have been breeding for plant habit and branching and let the flower color fall where it will. Now this year i have plant habit in the genetics of my seedlings so now i will start line breeding for different colors and edges and be very selective with the future seedlings to keep the plant habit and only select the colors of certain lines. I have the colors so now i will inbreed these to clear up the colors and keep the bigger edges comming in my dips. I dont get many visiters from out of state but last year we were a tour garden for our club and Herbie and Gayle Phelps came out to see our garden and Herbie was very surprised at what he was seeing. And his dips have the blue eyes that i want and he wants my size so we will be trading plant from time to time.

As more seedlings continue to open there will be MORE JOY. Thanks for looking. Jim Elliott