Breeding: For Color

Krista · 2023-03-29T13:23:18+00:00

Teddahlia (starting a new discussion for this) Thank you for answering all of my questions about Giraffe. Are there other dahlias that have the same lateral...

Teddahlia

Margaret dislikes poms. Several years ago she agreed to hand cross a pom because I complained I could not get any seeds from them. Her one cross resulted in 22 seeds. It resulted in one pom that was introduced: HH Frodo. She refused to do any more pom crosses.

And the obvious question is: Why don't you do some crosses? I won my medal with HH Moonsong, the result of my hand cross of a giant and an HH seedling that was never introduced. It was both time consuming and meticulous work. The other 4 hand crosses had no seeds or they did not sprout. I am not good at meticulous, time consuming work and leave the hand crossing to Margaret and she gets to choose what she crosses. She may cross a few things besides waterlilies next year. Meanwhile, we have lots of hand crossed waterlily seeds. She set a personal record for seeds from one pod but she does not like me to share her stats. a
Margaret hand pollinating in 2024.

bloomhjelm

Teddahlia Who chooses the colors of the organza bags? 🙂

In what ways might Margaret's hand-crossing methods differ from Kristine Albrechts? Kristine has documented hers on YouTube but I don't know how methods may differ between hybridizers.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia hand crossing definitely seems like a “labor of love” enjoying the meticulous-ness process of it and the flowers you are working with.

Was the lack of pom seeds several years ago found in open pollination dahlias or only from your hand crossing attempts? I only grew one Pom style dahlia so everything I crossed with it was a different bloom style. If one of my whopping 3 Pom seeds actually germinates and grows that’s my sign to buy a lotto ticket

Teddahlia

Margaret learned how to hand cross from Wayne Holland of Hy dahlias many years before Kristine Albrecht visited our garden and Margaret showed her how she hand crosses. Yes, there are differences but if you follow Kristine's methods you can succeed. In other words, I did not answer your question as Margaret prefers to be private about how she does it. As with most things, it is a hundred small things that make a difference and half of them you do not even realize you are doing or that you are the only one doing it that way. It goes both ways and the organza bags are Kristine's idea as we used home made tulle cloth covers and rubber bands previously. Tulle cloth works well too but the organza bags have handy pull strings. And as you know, very few people do hand crossing as it is very time consuming and many have tried and failed.

bloomhjelm

Teddahlia I have maybe formulated a better question.

In the world of dahlia hybridizing what information is highly classified versus need-to-know versus public? 🙂

Teddahlia

"In the world of dahlia hybridizing what information is highly classified versus need-to-know versus public?"
Re-phrased: "In the world of dahlia hybridizing what information is highly classified versus information that is freely shared?"
Breeders use special flowers to produce their seeds. Many do not share this information ever or do so years later. We have "private" breeding flowers too and do not share them with others. A lot of "old fashioned" dahlia breeding is growing lots of seedlings betting on good results by sheer luck. Those people believe that their advantage is their ability to recognize good seedlings and that others would not recognize their potential.

Teddahlia

Was the lack of pom seeds several years ago found in open pollination dahlias or only from your hand crossing attempts? Poms when grown in your garden with normal care and feeding do not make seeds and one year for example from about 10 pom plants I got less than 5 seeds. And they all came from one variety while the other 5 or 6 varieties had none. If you were a bee would you squeeze into the tiny opening in a ripe pom flower(most bees are too big but let's assume there are some small bees) or would you concentrate on those BB sized flowers with lot's of room and lots more goodies to harvest? So some poms are capable of making seeds but are not pollinated. If a pom can make seeds, hand pollinating can work. However, Margaret the hand crosser is just like the bees: too much work for little results. Remember too that poms are not waterlilies and Margaret likes waterlilies.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia oh wow! How interesting, I always assumed open pollination =loads more seeds but not the case here. Well in that case I guess my 2 seeds from one plant I should be satisfied with, tbd if any actually germinate and grow. But next year I will use the Pom pollen and not invest so much effort into trying to get them to make seeds.

Bessie

Teddahlia before the gopher started taking out the dahlias ( in mid August I think), I observed that Hollyhill Snowdrop only had a few (3-5) stigmas. I've noticed that later in the summer more stigmas are produced in most all my Dahlias. Another thought to ponder... In the summer when I'm hand pollinating, I don't always remove all the petals off the flower, which is typical when hand pollinating. I hypothesize that leaving some petals facilitates a bit of mechanical protection from the sun and drying winds, which in theory would give the pollen a better opportunity to be viable longer and fertilize.
This waterlilly is one of two Dahlias blooming in my yard. The color is much softer peachy color than this photo taken in early July. The other Dahlia still blooming is Hollyhill Serenity. I've been playing Bee with the two waterlillies, since they are on opposite sides of the yard. Pollinating in December... I'm either very optimistic, a little crazy with too much time on my hands, or both.

Teddahlia

" I hypothesize that leaving some petals facilitates a bit of mechanical protection from the sun and drying winds, which in theory would give the pollen a better opportunity to be viable longer and fertilize." The organza bag here covers the mother pod and petals just make taking it off and on more difficult. Margaret gets lots of seeds but I am sworn to secrecy about such things.
Pollinating is actually sort of interesting. In China they hand pollinate an acre or two of Asian pears using pollen collected from one tree of a different variety grown near the house. They extend the pollen using flour and use chicken feathers to do the actual pollinating. Life would be easy if that all worked for dahlias.

Teddahlia

Margaret's picture of a 2022 seedling. We brought this one into the kitchen this year and placed it on the counter where it certainly caught your attention. It is really bright colors.

bloomhjelm

Teddahlia Delicious color, like marmalade.

blown_dry

Teddahlia Lovely! I like dahlas that glow.

Teddahlia

This time of year pictures look 50% better than in the height of the dahlia season. I do not know how she got this one to look that good as it does not have pluperfect form. It is it's color that makes you put on the sunglasses to look at it. And it is one of those that looks better in the vase the next day as the colors "bleed" ( my theory is that the vacuoles in the pigment cells burst making for more intense color).

Teddahlia

Valda: Poms were well bred in the 1930s and this 1941 flower is as nice as it's picture. It still wins in shows despite being a bit too large for it's pom classification. I like it's color.

Teddahlia

This red waterlily is Seedling 2311 and the picture was taken in portrait mode. 2311 is a seedling of our "old reliable" private flower(red) 17102, We like 17102 for numerous reasons and two of them were that it grew tall at 6 feet and the flowers were well cupped. We have used it for breeding since 2018 and several nice flowers have resulted. 2311 seedling is 6 generations of our breeding. I believe I saved some seeds from it this year.

calico20hill

Teddahlia I really really would like a 6' tall one of these!

Teddahlia

2311 is only about 5 feet tall. Speaking of color, I got to thinking why it is red "all over". Dahlias have color on the front and reverse of the floret. Salish Twilight Girl has lavender on the front and purple on the reverse.
HH Golden glow has streaky red on the reverse. But 2311 seems to have the same red color on the front and back of the florets .

HH Golden Glow

KitCMC

Teddahlia a work of art

bloomhjelm

It seems to me that one of the most attractive features of cupping dahlias is the striations and pinstriping on the petal reverse as well as the possible variation of color on the reverse.

I haven't seen any fall or winter sales list particularly new and rare waterlilies yet. I think they are saving them for spring sales.

A very very small waterlily which also cups would be an amazing thing and I hope to see it in future seasons.

« Previous Page Next Page »