Anyone else doing a seedling photo review?
Inevitably once or twice an off-season I'll spontaneously start to browse through the past season's seedling bloom photos.
Inevitably I'll see one or two blooms, and sometimes more, that catch my eye when they hadn't before.
Or I'll see some that I had forgotten about.
Often this leads me to make some changes to my cross planning...
Take this gal for instance. Had totally forgotten about her! But she really is quite fun to look at so maybe she merits some further contemplation:
I now seem to recall that every bloom this year displayed this quilling, and they frequently made me chuckle. Out-loud.
And for some reason the big golden yellow throat, with matching sepal segments, is pretty cool looking.
So should I work with this seedling?
One factor I consider is uniqueness, so I'm challenged with a classic hybridizer's dilemma-- how do I figure out how unique my bloom is?
If I am very active every year reviewing what's been out there for sale, and seeing what's new, I may have a pretty good feel for what is unique.
I also can ask the opinions of hybridizer and collector friends.
I also can do a database search.
Search of "quill" in the description = ~80 results. Search of quill in the name added some more.
Some do have a similar look, like
'Ready Fire Aim' by the wonderful Judy Davisson.
'Art Gallery Quilling' by Lambertson.
And 'Clarence M. Ford/Bep' by Anderson-Shull.
So my seedling isn't really ground-breaking, but based on my feel and the database search I am leaning toward considering this bloom to be at least somewhat unique.
A challenge with this type of bloom-- one that relies on one particular trait manifesting strongly-- is that it needs to be consistent.
The quilling will have to occur not only on most
every bloom in a growing season, but on most blooms
every growing season. And even better if it does so for people growing it in a wide range of conditions
around the country. You look in the database at 'Quiller'
apparently a lot of people aren't really getting the quilling. That's not ideal. So ideally I'd be able to do a lot of testing of this plant in different grower's gardens...
Another challenge: what do you cross a quiller with if you don't have any other quillers? Maybe I'll buy some quillers and start a new area of focus.
Or maybe I won't have to make any crosses because she'll show herself to be intro-ready after moving her out of the poor growing spot she's in.
I'm glad I re-discovered this one, but not sure yet what I'm going to do with it...
