Pinks seedlings

I will have to find out what to look out for with these new seedlings. The colours are quite attractive. This first picture is upside down. Must be an Australian pink.

The above photo shows the double referred to in the text at the bottom.

I had loads like the above. Hardly suprising as I used Melody and Gypsy a lot in the crosses.

The two photos above are of the same flower. A bit different but maybe not a show type.

Here is a pink that turns to white as it matures. You can see the three stages of very pink, blush pink(on the right) and white all on the same stem. I suspect this is no good for showing but it makes an interesting flower.

Again not a show type but an interesting colour combination.

Like the auriculas, breeding pinks is a new venture for me. Last year I crossed a few cultivars and have had some nice seedlings flower. They flowered a bit later than my standard show cultivars and like the auriculas there were quite a lot of also rans that looked almost identical. However, the odd one may turn out to be useful and the double one (Photo 2) was placed third out of 14 at Doncaster at the Yorkshire Carnation Society early show which is probably the best place in Britain to see pinks apart from Harrogate as Messrs Gamble, Potter and Willis are out in force and some other very good exhibitors attend this early July show.

Auricula seedlings

Many growers don't just grow the one sort of flower. They might exhibit two or three different ones at different times of year or they might also grow something not for show. I grow a few auriculas like this. A couple of years ago I had a go at raising some new ones from seed. Above you can see some of the results. Quite a few didn't flower in their second year. I will have to wait for them.

Primulinus seedlings

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Primulinus gladioli are not bred commercially any more. A few keen amateurs in the U.K. have produced all the prims seen at flower shows in recent years.

These are a few of the seedlings from one cross made in 2007 between 'Hastings' an old 1960s prim and 'Flevo Dancer' a modern Dutch 200. As most of these photos get taken when the plant flowers for the first time, I don't bother with full spike pictures. I just want an idea about the colour and floret form for now. They mostly flowered in 2010 from seed sown in 2008 although the first photo shows one that didn't flower until 2011, which is unusual. Athough the mother, 'Hastings' is a coffee coloured prim, there was only one brown flower in the cross and that was not worth keeping. Last year I crossed these seedlings with some standard exhibition prims to see if I can improve them a bit. This year I have crossed these seedlings with each other in the hope of maybe releasing some recessive characteristics not appearing in the first generation.

The above seedling may be useful as it is later flowering compared to the others.

The above is a 2011 photo, so second year of flowering and the colour is more coral than it appears here. This is an early flowering one.

Above: I like this one's combination of rose-pink and lemon.

Above: this one's problem is that the petals tend to recurve a bit too much.

This one has quite nice zigzag placement. As all these are grown in pots in the greenhouse for a couple of years, I find temperature affects floret form and placement immensely and they need growing again outside to see their full potential. The bud count usually goes up when grown outside as well.

I showed this one above in its first year of flowering at Harrogate in 2009 and then was lucky to win Best Floret Box with it at Harrogate in 2010. It's now known as 'Vanilla Slice' so you may see it on the showbench in 2011, but don't hold your breath.

Above: a classic problem with this sort of cross is maintaining the whippy prim stem which some like this one don't have. The top, which you can't see here, is too heavy, too much like a 200.

The above is too gappy for exhibition but will be o.k. as a garden prim.

The one above is just delicious in colour. In its first year of flowering it was a bit wayward with some florets having a really flicked up hood although it may settle down to better form when grown cooler outside.