I find this interesting. This is a seedling from last year.

First photo taken June 15.



Second photo taken June 20



I spend as much time as possible each day going over and over my seedling patch and I often find myself re-evaluating whether to keep or toss seedlings over the course of several weeks of taking another look at them. Mostly I downgrade because I am probably too excited to see them when the season starts and also because as this task takes so much time, I become more determined to keep fewer and fewer.

Less often, things change, perhaps the flower improves after its FFO and I upgrade to keep status. I still am not going to keep the one I'm showing but it really struck me looking at the photos that I have to keep my eyes open and not just ignore them based on the color ribbon I've tied on the scapes.

I do agree the bloom in the second photo looks better, but I am really interested how you use ribbons of different colors in your selection process. Will you give us more details on that?

Sometimes it takes a 2nd year or more for the bloom to settle down in my experience.

with Larry about ribbon details.

Some plants seem to take much longer than others to really reach their potential and actually show what they are capable of. After four years my named cultivar 'Gypsy Rose Lee' has some scapes with 5 branches, something I have not seen on it before.
Still if a person has limited space for seedlings, would they better off watching a plant for an extra year or two, or if a plant does not show immediate potential, replacing it with something newer? I guess that is a decision each of us has to make about our seedlings, but I suspect it is a little of both even with the huge growers that do thousands of seedlings a year. I suspect that sometimes there are just a few plants that for some reason has that little extra something that allows it to be keep that extra year or two.

I have noticed the same, on seedlings as well as registered plants that are blooming for the first time in my garden. First time seedlings really seem to need a few tries and even older plants seem to be throwing less exciting flowers.

Here are two in my garden that are showing a wider range of expression. Multiple photos are taken over a few days as they burn through the buds on each scape.
This one has lovely patterns but the cloudy weather seems to make it lose pattern.

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This one I mixed up the photos. The first bloom is near the middle and has two tiny white splotches which I thought was awesome until I saw the second bloom (those top photos with more patterning) and then the third bloom was pretty bland with only faint hints that may not even show in photos
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