SEEDLING PAGE 7
Our introduction, BELLE OF ASHWOOD, is one of the finest plants, instant rebloomers and parents we have introduced. But we have covered that extensively else where. This page is dedicated to what we are seeing coming from the breeding. Perhaps the most significant characteristic from BOA is the way in which it puts instant reblooming ability into its babies. We learned in 2007 that a double dose of Belle can do what you see in the image below.
Here we see a seedling which is the offspring of a cross between two babies of BELLE OF ASHWOOD. The image does not express what visitors spotted. In the seedling field, among hundreds of other showy beauties, this seedling simply put out a glow that set it apart. One did not have to even be near the blossoms to be attracted by that glow. T09-38 was buried in the middle of a row with many taller daylilies surrounding it. This usually will necessitate a person practically getting on top of the flower before it is appreciated. There is a lot of green in this seedling and that gave the flower a luminescence that I do not recall seeing in another flower. And it was there every day. Person after person visiting pointed this out. Please do not expect the image here to show the glow that it has in the garden. Photography often is simply incapable of transmitting such an esoteric quality. Needless to say, the pollen from this beauty went on hundreds of blossoms all over the garden. T09-38 is a very likely future introduction, having an unmistakable beauty as well as the bells and whistles we expect in an intro, including a healthy rebloom.
We kept the size of the image larger than usual to allow you to see clearer what the plant is doing. This is instant rebloom on steroids. Is it a step toward true continuous bloom. We would love to see that. The point is that BELLE OF ASHWOOD has proven itself to be powerful in passing this highly desirable ability to its progeny. We will try to illustrate below some of the flexibility BOA has in breeding for a variety of colors. (We let all heck break lose in 2006 in this regard and we will see a large variety of of BELLE babies crosses to colors heretofore unexplored.)
The image above is of BELLE OF ASHWOOD itself. This was a fan in the sales beds which we rejected for shipping as it was a single and we don't ship singles unless we have to in the first year or so. Early in the bloom season it put up these three scapes and put on a show that was wonderful. Before the season was done it had put up a fourth scape which was eventually killed by frost. The take we can derive from this is that the drive to bloom is strong in this one. that helps account for the strong tendency to put instant rebloom into the babies.
Crossed to MARY'S BABY this was one of the results. The purple from MB dominated as we hoped it would. The instant rebloom from BOA came through. A purple with instant rebloom with the kind of color you see in the image. Can you see the smile I have on my face right now?
A cross of BELLE OF ASHWOOD and a sib to MEMORIAL TO STEVE produced this beauty. This seedling was one of the most bright, striking and simply beautiful we saw bloom in 2007. Did the instant rebloom for BOA come through on this beauty? You bet it did! This seeding is numbered T07-7 and has risen to our most treasured and used baby out of BELLE.