SEEDLING PAGE 5
ASHWOOD SMOKEY JOE
This the one which caused all the stir as a seedling at the Hybridizer's Slide Show at Myrtle Beach. If you have grown many purple daylilies, you will know that some purples will take on a smoky look with a muted, reduced intensity purple after a cold night. What makes Smokey Joe so special is that there is almost no weather dependency. The one thing that is not easy to see in the image is the starkness of the black line which outlines the eyezone. There are still just a few divisions left for the 2006 season.
There was a most curious result in 2006. It is seedling T06-28. A very improbable result came about from a cross of GREAT WHITE and ASJ. A fair number of the seedlings were clearly in the edge/no eye category. One of the better is pictured above. We sold a number of this cross as unbloomed seedlings on the Lily Auction several years ago. I would be curious if anyone who purchased some got similar results, better results?
Yes, the color of this baby from ASHWOOD SMOKEY JOE is just as intense as the image reveals. There were only about five seedlings in this particular cross and we numbered two. The others did not bloom except for one and it wasn't too far off the mark either. The one rebloomed also which makes it a pretty likely candidate for introduction. As a new 2007 seedling it will be quite a while before it can be on the market however.
Most of the cross of GREAT WHITE and ASJ produced plants of excellent habit. This is a sib to T06-28. While it may not show the edge/no eye look, the bud count and especially the branching are astounding. Click on the image above and take a close look at the branches on those scapes. Most are 6 to 10 inches long. Note how the flowers are displayed. It takes branching like that to properly display when when there are such bud counts. This seedling is also a half sib to MEMORIAL TO STEVE. The bud count is not quite as high but the length of the branches is even a little better. Yeah, you bet, they got crossed last summer and the seedlings in the greenhouse look great.
The good news in '03 and '04 was that the pattern and smoky overlay passes along to the progeny with ease. In 2001 when we first identified ASJ, I went into creative block. The only thing I could think to cross it to was MARY'S BABY. I had no expectation that the pattern would reappear in the babies. The saturation of MB seemed to make that very unlikely. The kids that bloomed these last two summers proved me wrong, wrong, wrong! About a half dozen of the babies exhibited a similar smoky pattern. Out of a field of some 20 or so, I am very satisfied. I had expected that I would be several generations and thousands of kids before I would see anything of interest again. As you can see from the babies below, the pattern is clearly from ASJ but with distinct and clear variations.
T04-24 T04-25 (ASJ X MARY'S BABY) T03-35
ASHWOOD SMOKEY JOE is a giant leap forward in achieving the smoky look without the weather being a factor. This seedling, T05-29, has entirely removed that relationship. The pattern is not as stark as several of the sibs but the persistence of the pattern makes T05-29 valuable.
Another baby from the cross of ASJ and MARY'S BABY is T04-37. A look at the image of the plant will provide you one reason why we might wish to make this one available.
Smokey Joe is from TUPAC AMARU X (BURNING INHERITANCE X APACHE WAR DANCE) It is finished flower in and of itself. It has an excellent, well-budded and branched scape above nice foliage. While not the great big flower we prefer, at five inches, Smokey Joe is large enough to please us. You will notice the strange cross. Crossing a hot orange to a purple is not something we have done much of heretofore, but you can be sure we will be doing more of it in the future. Here is an image of the orange parent. You can easily see why ASJ was such a pleasant and wonderful surprise.
