for the replies!
@GigiAdeniumPlumeria What you say about pollination and parents is reassuring - and a bit frustrating. It's like having to wait several years on opening a Christmas present.
The more I think about it, the more I am reminded of colour genetics in dogs and then it makes perfect sense. If two red Shiba Inus can produce sesame (wolf coloured) puppies, and if the merle gene can hide in a red/brindle/sable Cardigan Welsh Corgi then why should the same not apply to plants? Nature is amazing.
I'm glad I tagged all the seeds from the start since it would be impossible by now to tell which plant came from which seed.
The "Triple Flower" that turned out single red flowers grows differently than the ones I got that were just "Obesum" in that it, like Tracy, has more branches without pruning rather than predominantly shooting one tall stem up as the others have.
I'm also pretty certain that the ones I got as Arabicum, Arabicum Black Stem, Arabicum Black Giant, Arabicum King Kong and Thai Socotranum S1 are, if not exactly what the seller claimed, at the very least different from the Obesum and Somalense ones. Only two of them have fuzz under the leaves, but they all grow slower, are more susceptible to root rot, want much less water and are chunking out the trunks. Since the big caudex is what mainly attracts me to desert roses, I have high hopes for them. But it does take patience and I keep having to stop myself from overwatering them.
When you pay $5/seed and only 25% of the seeds even germinate, it's not great to kill the babies with overwatering. It's never great, of course, but I'm much less fussed about it if I have 10 more of the same seedlings and spent $0.3 per seed.
@KatsPlantsTX The one I ordered from on Etsy ships internationally from Réunion (France) with Phytosanitary certificates and while the first one to bloom didn't look like the picture from the order, it's certainly got at the very least double petals. The seller, Jim, pollinates the seeds himself and ships quickly. Even though the seeds had a long journey to get here, I planted them 17 days after I ordered them. The name of the Etsy shop is passiondesplantes. If I was going to get more seeds for the sake of the flowers, I would order them from there. Might be worth a shot if you want to try?
