Friday, January 25, 2013

A New Lachenalia Hybrid

One of my favorite Lachenalia species is L. viridiflora. It has very unusual turquoise blue-green tubular flowers that really stand out when it blooms in mid-winter. I've had it for many years (it's very easy to grow here in San Jose).

A couple of years ago, I decided to try making some Lachenalia hybrid crosses. Most of the crosses didn't work, but one that set seed was L. viridiflora x L. aloides aloides (also known as L. tricolor). The latter has orange-yellow tubes with maroon lips.

Add all those colors together and what do you get?  I found out this week:






Yellow is a hard color to capture with my camera. In person, these are lemon yellow flowers with blue shoulders and magenta lips. I they qualify as "interesting" more than beautiful.  I've tried to self-pollinate these; come back in three years and find out what the second generation looks like.

(Cross number mm 10-33.)

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