New Moraea Hybrids, 2019

It was another interesting year of bulb breeding. As usual there were some nice new flowers and some disappointments, but the biggest surprise is that these plants continue to surprise me. I have been expecting that at some point I’d start to get diminishing returns, with the same old colors and patterns repeating. But instead I am continuing to get surprising new flowers that don’t look quite like anything I’ve grown before.

Contents of this year's summary:
--My favorite new hybrids of 2019
--Video tour 2019
--Things I'm learning
--My Moraea wish list
--I'm happy to share Moraea seeds


Notable new hybrids

My favorite new hybrid of the year. It’s hard to pick out one flower that I liked best, but this one stood out for the shock I felt when I saw it staring at me. And it really does stare – the eyes are an almost fluorescent blue, surrounded by a jewel-tone halo of blended orange and pink. Click on the link to see its spooky dark-eyed sibling.

MM 15-59b

Rainbow blend. This flower was beaten up by the rain, but it still stood out for the rainbow wash of colors in its tepals: blue-green, yellow, red, and a faint violet halo. This is a hybrid between M. neopavonia and M. villosa, a cross I’ve made many times before. But I’ve never gotten results that look quite like this plant.

MM 14-176a

Hairy eye. The pollen parent was an orange flower that had an unusual mottled ring around the eye. I wanted to see if I could get that same color pattern in purple. It worked, and if anything the pattern here looks even streakier than its parent.

MM 15-106c

Ring of dots. I’m starting to get a few plants in which the usual eye has more or less disappeared. In this case there’s just a pale yellow shadow where the eye should be, and it’s surrounded by a very precise ring of dots. So strange! Also, check out those almost-reddish inner tepals.

MM 16-07a

Orange eye. Here’s another example of a transformed eye. In this case there’s a prominent orange splash where the eye should be. The eyes in “Peacock” Moraea flowers are usually blue, green, or black. I don’t know what happened with the genetics of this flower – has the eye turned orange, or has it disappeared and left behind an orange zone that would normally be covered by the eye?

MM 16-19b

Broken eye. This is another flower that made me stop and stare when it opened. The usual blue eye has broken up into blotches on a pale yellow background. Dang!

MM 16-22a

The whole package. I’ve gotten flowers with stripes before, and flowers with blue eyes, but this is one of the best combinations I’ve seen of vivid blue eye, purple veins, and bright orange cup. It reminds me a bit of Moraea ‘Zoe,’ one of my all-time favorites.

MM 15-118a

More fun with M. lurida. A couple of years ago I got my first hybrids involving M. lurida, and they were very exciting because they had such unusual color patterns. This flower is an F2 hybrid from those crosses. It and its siblings have the same prominent veins as their parents, but in a range of attractive pastel colors. Plus they reached blooming size in just two years, as opposed to the usual three to four. Click on the link to see the whole family.

MM 17-26f

Creeping toward red. I continue to try to breed a truly red Moraea flower. I know they exist in the wild because I’ve visited them in South Africa, but they’re not available anywhere, and it’s not easy to breed for that color. This is the closest I came this year. It looks kinda’ reddish in person, but really it’s a mashup of magenta and orange. Oh well, I’ll keep trying.

MM 14-153c

Cool colors. And finally, I wanted to share this one just because the colors are so nice. It looks much like a typical M. villosa, but the tepals are clean white, the eye is pure blue, and there’s a very distinct orange ring around it.

MM 15-58b

Honorable mention

Here are a few more bonus flowers.

Lotsa’ spots. When I started breeding Moraeas, it was very unusual to get any spots or streaks on the tepals. Now it’s becoming almost commonplace -- but I still like it.

MM 14-09d

MM 14-73b

MM 14-94f

MM 14-129b

MM 14-145a

MM 15-18e

MM 15-102a

Weird eyes. Breeding with Moraea bellendenii tends to produce flowers with strange broken or striped eyes. There are a couple of examples above, and here are a few more…

MM 15-10c (click through to see some interesting siblings)

MM 15-17b (click the link for more siblings)

MM 15-64a

MM 16-19a

Beyond Moraeas. I focus most of my breeding on the genus Moraea, but I experiment a little with Gladiolus, Calochortus, and a few others. These two results stood out this year:

This is a Calochortus hybrid, the result of crossing yellow and magenta flowers. If only I could get this color in the Moraeas.

MM 15-129a

This is a Gladiolus hybrid. I love the Azalea-like color patterns I’m starting to get in these flowers.

MM 15-83f

Video tour

Last year, I posted a video tour of my planting beds when they were at peak bloom. Some people liked it, so I did a longer version this year. If you’re interested, click on the video and come visit my back yard…

Things I’m learning

I feel pretentious saying that I’m learning anything from these plants, because so often when I think I’ve learned something I find out a few years later that I was wrong. But this year I have two thoughts…

It looks like M. longiaristata can indeed interbreed with these flowers. For several years I’ve had a plant that was identified as M. longiaristata but didn’t look exactly like the species description. This year a single plant from seed supplied by Cameron and Rhoda McMaster bloomed, and it’s definitely a classic M. longiaristata. I made two crosses onto it, and they both took. So I tentatively think M. longiaristata can be added to the interfertile list.

M. bellendenii has interesting effects when hybridized. As you can see in the pictures above, all sorts of goofy things happen to the eyes of the flowers. But some of the M. bellendenii hybrids also have branched stems that make a lot of flowers per plant. I feel like I’m just barely scratching the surface of what these hybrids will produce.


My Moraea wish list

There are a number of Moraea species and selections I’m still trying to obtain, both to preserve them in cultivation and to try adding them to these hybrids. I’ve tried the usual sources, like Silverhill and Gordon Summerfield, but these species are not available. You can see my wish list here. I’d be happy to pay for seeds or even pollen of these species. To be clear I am not trying to solicit any illegal or improper collecting; I figure these things are probably in private collections somewhere, and I am trying to figure out who to ask.

The plant I’m most anxious to find is the brick red form of M. tulbaghensis, because I like red.


Free seeds

People sometimes contact me asking if they can buy some of these plants, and the answer is that I don’t sell them (it’s too much of a hassle). But I am glad to share seeds for free. Since these are hybrids, I can’t supply the exact flowers you see here, but I can often send siblings of particular flowers, similar crosses, or certain colors or shapes that you like. I am also glad to share species seed when I have it available. You can contact me using the email address here if you’re interested.


Thank you

I want to express my thanks to the many folks who have helped me build my Moraea collection. It’s a sad thank-you this year because we lost some special people in the last 12 months. The late Rod and Rachel Saunders sent me oodles of amazing seeds from their seed business over the years, and were also very happy to give advice. And the late Cameron McMaster was very generous with advice and amazing plants. Other gardening friends and contributors include Paul F. X. Von Stein, Garry Knipe, Jim Duggan, Gordon Summerfield, Rhoda McMaster, and the members of the Pacific Bulb Society, International Bulb Society, and the Indigenous Bulb Growers of South Africa. And of course Dr. Bob Werra, the Moraea king, a great gardener and a truly nice human being. Thank you all.