What is a Bridge Plant?

My wife said i should not post each day but wait 2 days, so here i am. I am getting itchy fingers so hang in there if you can. Today is Sunday and the first day of the week and this morning i went out before i studied my Sunday School Lesson and saw this beautiful seedling. it is a 6 inch flower and scape is about 32 inches with about 14 buds. This is a Bridge Plant. It is burgandy and a big black eye with a black edge around the petals and 2 owls ears. I am in love. For me this flower made my bloom season and we havent hardly started. This is line bred from Lavender Blue Baby. Pod parent is LBB and pollen parent is 2 kids (F-1s) bred together and the (F-2) kid bred back to granma so to speak. I have been trying to get better blue eyes with great branching and here comes this black eyed beauty and messes up all my plans.

This will be my Bridge Plant. I love the flower and love the height of the scape but i need better bud count and branching. So am i going to do. I have lots of burgandy flowers with great branching and buds. Here is my plan. I have limited polled from the bridge plant that now has a number. D1210. I will pick out about 4 of my best branched burgandy colored plants along the same lines but with the genetics of LBB in them. As the flowers open on my 4 pod parents they will get pollen from D1210. If i am lucky enough to have a pod parent with a recessive gene for black eyes then i am in business and should have lots of seedlings to pick from. Now if this first generation(F-1) of seedlings dont have the black eye i am trying to get i will take the best seedlings that are tall and branching and breed them back to D1210 and most of the (F-2) generation should be showing the black eyes with great scapes. Also along the way there will be other seedlings of different base colors with black eyes and the edges should get bigger with each generation.

See there is nothing to it but time and a plan. When this happens i will have 4 years of breeding in this one flower. If God permits me to live this long i hope God will keep blessing our garden with all these beautiful flowers. We may never sell anything but we will always have a pretty yard. Thanks for listening. Jim Elliott