Moraea MM 19-17

Seed parent: MM 15-45 (M. villosa 'Zoe' X neopavonia 'Summerfield')

Pollen parent: MM 15-45b (M. villosa 'Zoe' X neopavonia 'Summerfield')

This is a sibling cross between two offspring of MM 15-45, a cross between a brightly colored flower and a spotted one. None of the MM 15-45 flowers had spots on them. Breeding them together is supposed to bring out the recessive genes, so that's what I tried. 

MM 19-17a. The first offspring of that sibling cross looked a lot like its parents: no spots (I guess that's why they call the genes recessive).

MM 19-17b. Oh wow! This is exactly what I was hoping for from this cross: dots, lines, a lot of orange, and big blue eyes. This plant is one of my favorite hybrids of 2023, and I tried to cross it with similar-looking flowers (although there aren't many other flowers that look like this!)

I am very happy about the way this one looks, and almost equally happy with what I learned from it. I’m pretty sure the spots are recessive, so to combine this look with a new background color I need to cross a spotted flower with a colored flower that I like. The children of that cross will not be spotted. This has happened repeatedly, and it puzzled me for a long time. But those plain offspring apparently carry the spotted gene as a recessive. If I cross those children (which I did in this case), most of the grandchildren will not be spotted, but a few will have spots and the new tepal color. 

Now that I understand what's going on, I should be able to breed spotted flowers more reliably.