Moraea MM 11-35

Seed parent: Moraea 03-07b ((atropunctata x neopavonia) X villosa c)
Pollen parent: Moraea 99-00a (atropunctata X neopavonia)

This is the offspring of a pale orange flower having a large blue eye, crossed with a mid-orange flower that has a dark eye.  I was hoping to get something with the big eye of MM 03-07b, but instead I got plants with small eyes and an intriguing range of tepal colors.

MM 11-35a has purple veins over a pale orange background. In person it looks mostly violet.

MM 11-35b is a peach color.

MM 11-35c is an intriguing pinkish-orange color.

MM 11-35d is pale orange.

I’d like to get these tepal shades on plants with brightly colored eyes. We’ll see...

Moraea MM 11-33

Seed parent: Moraea MM 99-00a
Pollen parent: Moraea gigandra

Pedigree: (atropunctata x neopavonia) X gigandra

I have high hopes for this cross: a purple flower crossed with pale orange could produce a wide range of colors. But the plant wasn’t happy this year and barely produced a single misshapen flower (probably due to a bad batch of potting soil). In this situation you can't really judge the flower color because poor health can change the color.

Hopefully it’ll grow better next year, when I get it into fresh soil, and then we can see what the flowers really look like.

MM 11-33a

Moraea MM 10-37

Seed parent: Moraea aristata
Pollen parent: Moraea tulbaghensis

I was very anxious to see the flowers from this cross. I was hoping for the big blue eye of M. aristata on a bright orange background. But instead, the flowers are all pale yellow-orange with a dark purple-black eye. Form b of this cross has aristata-style speckles on the backs of the tepals, the other forms don’t, but otherwise they are all identical. I did some crosses between them to see what the F2 generation will look like.

MM 10-37a

MM 10-37b

After a couple of days in the sun, the orange fades a bit, as you can see in this photo. (In case you're wondering, that little slip of plastic is a piece of vinyl window blind, which I use as a small tag to mark individual corms.)

Moraea MM 10-04

Seed parent: Moraea gigandra
Pollen parent: Moraea tulbaghensis (green eye)

This made for a very pleasant combination. Mostly the flower looks like Moraea tulbaghensis (this is yet another example in which orange appears to dominate over purple in the first generation cross). But the eye is wide and thin (more like an eyebrow than an eye), reminiscent of M. gigandra. The cup also has the color pattern of M. gigandra.

MM 10-04A

In the photo above, the eye looks blue. It's actually green.

This photo shows the green eye better. The color is a bit more vivid than this in real life.

This flower has been open for several days. The orange in the tepals gradually fades in the sun.

Only a single seed of this cross sprouted, so I’ll be trying to make the cross again.

Moraea tricolor (and color forms)

Several years ago the dean of Moraea-growers in the US, Bob Werra, gave me a pot of Moraea tricolor seedlings. He and I both expected them to all be pink, the standard color for that species, and the only color that either of us had ever seen in cultivation. Here's what the pink ones look like:

But to my surprise, when they started blooming, they came up in a wide variety of colors: orange, purple, mauve, and various intermediate shades.

Neither of us knows what happened. Bob thought they might be accidental hybrids, but I've tried some cross-breeding experiments with M. tricolor and some related species, and so far the results don't look at all like these flowers.

The other possibility is that these are unusual color forms of M. tricolor. Goldblatt's book The Moraeas of Southern Africa says they can come in shades of pink, yellow, and light purple; and South African bulb breeder Gordon Summerfield tells me they can have even stranger colors, such as green. So maybe Bob got a batch of seeds that happened to be in mixed colors.

If any Moraea experts have an opinion, I'd love to hear it.

In the meantime, I think they're beautiful, and I'm trying to build up stocks of each color so I can share them.

This bicolored one looks the most like some of my hybrids.

I love this bright orange one:

Moraea MM 12-143

Seed parent: Moraea macronyx

Pollen parent: Moraea tricolor














Moraea macronyx has a beautiful white and yellow flower. Moraea tricolor is usually bright pink with yellow nectar guides, and subtle striping on the tepals. Put them together, and here's what you get:

The parents are both low-growing plants whose flowers last for only a single day. In captivity here in California, they tend to bloom in early spring on the first sunny day after they're watered, so I have set my drip irrigation system to water on Friday night, giving me a better chance of seeing flowers when I'm home over the weekend. The plants bloom on and off for several weeks to over a month.

These cheerful little hybrids have subtle variations between individuals: A little more red on here, a bit more yellow there. I have tried to sort them into lettered selections, but it's hard to do accurately, especially since the individual flowers last only a single day. Better, I think, not to worry about the classification and just enjoy a cluster of them when a sunny day brings out a flush of flowers. They're especially welcome since they bloom before most of the other Moraeas (February in my part of California).

MM 12-143a.

The outer tepals are yellow, with some dark red streaks on them. The inner tepals are are mostly dark red with a yellow background, while the style crests (the upright things in the center) are white, veined with dark mauvey red. It's not exactly beautiful, but I think it's very interesting to see how the colors combine, and I can't wait to see what will happen with further breeding.

These plants first bloomed as two-year-old seedlings, still in the seed cup.

MM 12-143b.

MM 12-143c. 

MM 12-143d.

For the reciprocal to this cross, see MM 12-55.

Gladiolus MM 10-34

Seed parent: Gladiolus priorii
Pollen parent: Gladiolus odoratus

My first new hybrid of winter 2013-14 is in bloom, and it’s a nice one.

Although most of my hybridization efforts are in Moraea, I also experiment casually with other genera, including Romulea, Calochortus, and Gladiolus.  The new hybrid, MM 10-34, is a cross I made in 2010 between Gladiolus priorii and Gladiolus odoratus (now known as G. guthriei).

Here's G. odoratus:

It's a kind of mauvey-colored flower with a pale yellow background. Not the most beautiful color combination, but it’s fantastically freckled and striped. Here's G. priorii:

It's bright tomato red with a yellow throat, and has no speckles or streaks.


And how here are the offspring. They picked up the freckling of odoratus and much of the color of priorii. The flowers are a bronzy-red color that’s hard to photograph accurately. As you can see, individual plants vary in darkness...

Both priorii and odoratus bloom in early winter (mid- to late-November here in California), and the hybrid blooms then too. It’s a time when few bulbs are in bloom, so I’m very happy to have something new to look at.

This cross has the same inheritance pattern I’ve seen in other Gladiolus hybrids: speckles and streaks are carried over into the hybrids, while the color is a blend of the two parents.

I’m freezing some pollen from this plant, so I can try to cross it with some of the spring-blooming Gladiolus species. I’d like to see if I can get some plants that bloom in mid-winter, extending the blooming season further. But the only fall-spring cross I’ve made so far, MM 00-00 (G. gracilis x G. priorii), blooms in spring at the same time as gracilis.