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...

MissyWeitzel

Teddahlia my husband has Parkinson's. It's a cruel disease that takes away a little more physical and mental ability every day. It absolutely blows my mind that Leroux managed to start, plant, and tend to 2500 seedlings in later stages of PD!
Anyway, I have Clearview Leroux on order and I will look forward to seeing the big purple cactus bloom even more now!

Krista

Teddahlia The bloom in this photo looks like it has three different colors, it’s outstanding. I know there are more varieties that have three, but I can’t think of a lot. Can dahlias have more than three color combinations?

Teddahlia

Dick Parshall took over Gordie Leroux's gene pool. I bet his new one is from Gordie's breeding. I am growing a flower that Gordie used to start his line. Why not go way back and see what happens?

Bessie

These articles(saved months ago) have a fair amount of chemistry references. I like the color chart jpg link. Unfortunately, no reference to white in dahlias.

Breeding for color

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-chemistry-of-dahlia-flower-colors
Link to Color chart
https://www.americanscientist.org/sites/americanscientist.org/files/2022-110-3-136-infographic-1700x2238.jpg

Rare color of black dahlias

https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2229-12-225

Teddahlia

Nice and colorful article. There was another one that is written in scientific language that I waded through a year or so ago. I may get bored in all this rainy weather and read it again. In a way, it is nice to know a lot of the chemical basis for dahlia color. But we we really need more info on the genetics of color. We want to know what to breed together to get the desired color. Why something is a color is one thing but how to breed that color into you flower is another thing altogether.

Krista

Teddahlia Mama and Papa contribute an equal share of the genes.

Are there variables other than the ability to produce seed at all that weigh into which varieties you choose to provide the pollen and which you choose to develop the seed?

Teddahlia

If you know a variety makes no seeds but that it makes pollen(some make no pollen either), you can encourage a bee to use that pollen on your seed maker variety. Bees are like taxi drivers and you just tell them where to go. 😘 Mike Iler mixed non seed makers with his seed makers in his isolation beds. His iso bed was over 100 feet away from his main garden if my memory serves me right.

Teddahlia

The essence of breeding is controlling the genetics of the seedlings. In non scientific words, you are trying to preserve your good traits and add some new good traits or delete some negative traits in the seedlings. It can be that your seed parent is nearly perfect but all you want is some different colors. So, you identify a pollen parent that will have some nice color and has enough good form to not go too far backwards and then let the games begin. Breeding dahlias means growing lots of seedlings.
Nice color but form poor.

Cosey

Does anyone know the history of how/who created the ADS color charts? Or how/if/when it's updated? Is there a color standard it follows?

MissyWeitzel

Cosey yes it was adopted by the ADS from a dahlia grower's charts and I just read about it in an ADS book I have and I'll look it up tonight and post here.

MissyWeitzel

From the ADS Publication The American Dahlia Society the second 50 years, which basically takes little snippets from each year's ADS bulletins and lists them by year. In 1968 it says it is adopted from DahliaDel's color chart.

I seem to remember it was mentioned again later, I'll follow up with anything I find.

MissyWeitzel

Ok, here's the rest of the story about the ADS color chart, still from the same book.
From 1979

From 1984

From 1987

From 2001

From 2002

From 2003

Teddahlia

I became a judge before they had an ADS color chart. Judges were required to use the RHS Colour Chart that is the world wide standard for flower colors and numerous other things. It was first published in 1966. When I used it , it had about 800 pages and now is up to 920. It cost about $120- in those days and I believe it is up to over $200- now. The accuracy of the chart is excellent . The ease of use is terrible.

In about the late 90s, a committee of dahlia judges was tasked with putting together a dahlia specific color chart. The result was the ADS Chart that the ADS sells. I would like to say that the ADS chart is a good product but I have disliked it from day one. Committees often cannot agree on much and I would venture to say that this committee could not have agreed on much or if they did they are color blind.

Cosey

Missy! You are a peach! I appreciate the time it took to compile that info! I'll read through it again later.

Ted- the cost of an RHS color chart is $300 with shipping and very hard to source! I got one last summer.

I'm with you on the pros and cons of each system, though I believe the ADS chart is due for an update for many reasons. (Not volunteering!) I'll go back to Missy's research to get a better understanding of how and why the ADS chart was organized.

THANK YOU!

Teddahlia

"Color is why people love dahlias" is a quote from the owner of a large wholesale florist company in a big city. My other pet peeve is the actual names of the colors. This especially applies to "Bronze". Go to any florist and say you want some bronze flowers and you will see a blank stare. My wedding theme is "bronze". That is a joke.
I once said I would never classify a dahlia seedling as being bronze. I went for many years and never did but got backed into corner when a flower was exactly the color of a bronze chip and there was no orange or yellow chip for it. Bronze is not a "color" but is the name for an expensive statue.
By the way, . color is different in different countries, even those that speak English. In the UK, they have strange ideas about "pink".

blown_dry

I find it frustrating to try and describe a dahlia's color using that system, but until I think of a better one, I will just have to lump it. My biggest issue is knowing where coral becomes pink or orange.

Teddahlia

Coral is pink in the UK.

Teddahlia

As a computer person you should demand an RGB color.

Bessie

Teddahlia I was thinking in terms of RGB yesterday, but I didn't want to be the first nerd to enter the room🤓. I dream of an app that would scrape the web for Dahlia images, analyze their RGB.Then spit out a color chart or color "map" of Dahlia colors. The functionality would include clicking (or searching) on a Dahlia name and up would pop the color range and median color(s) for that Dahlia, showing the color on the map. Reverse function would be clicking on a color in the color map, and you'd get the RBG range, along with a list of dahlias that contain that median RBG. The programming language Python would be perfect for the application. If only I hadn't just started a bunch of seeds, and purchased a bunch of tubers, and didn't have weeds growing in my yard😳 I'd be free to crash my computer, and then realize the extent of my naivity and understand the app is harder than it sounds.

Teddahlia

If I were in charge, I would blur the picture to try to identify the predominant RGB color and then use that single color for the book entry. Easier said than done. The word predominant is important as people expect the flower to be generally that color. Your map of colors is nice and in Photoshop you can point anywhere in a picture and the RGB number is displayed. How you would use those numerous data points to come up with one color is the issue.

Bessie

Teddahlia that deep purple Dahlia color is spectacular!
How to come up with one color for the Dahlia? Humm, that might take some trial and error. I really like your idea of blurring the image. I actually did blur images using an open source image processing library and Python in 2008. We turned the images into color histograms, and then tried to identify the blurred image (document) based on the histogram similarities.

As with many software solutions, one solution may not fit every "use case". Bi-color Dahlias and peony Dahlia with prominent yellow centers come to mind as special cases. If you think it's worthwhile, should we start a new thread and talk about what the software "use cases" would be? More than one person could answer the question "What would you want the Dahlia color app to do?" "What would you use it for?", etc. A simple solution is always better.

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