Post 7 in a series of 7.
The tour culminated with its principal event, attendance at the World Daffodil Convention in Dunedin. If the floor markings suggest a tennis court or basketball court to you, that’s because the convention was held in part of the arena of the Edgar Sports Centre. In this photo, you see part of the camellia show.
There were actually two daffodil shows at the Centre. There is normally a local Dunedin daffodil show, and the presence of the South Island National Show, Australasian Daffodil Championship, and World Daffodil Convention didn’t stop them from having their local show. It’s in the far back of this photo.
The Champion bloom of the local show was ‘Disc Eye’ 9W-GYR hybridized by Isobel Dreaver, registered by Ron Abernethy, and exhibited by Alan Brown.
Now I’ll show you some (but not all) of the premiers of the national show. I took a complete set of photos of the premiers that Nancy Tackett will install on the NDS web site and that Trevor Rollinson may also post. We’ll start with the Champion bloom of the show. It’s ‘Moon Shadow’ 3W-GYY exhibited by Denise and Neil McQuarrie. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a good year for the McQuarries with the champion blooms also at the North Island National Show and the Brightwater show.
The Reserve Champion was ‘Hunterston’ 3W-GYR exhibited by John Hunter.
The premier intermediate and premier intermediate seedling was Wayne Hughes’ seedling 04.72(11.1).
The premier Division 7 bloom was LQ-23 exhibited by Ron and Margaret Tyrrell. This is a seedling hybridized by Wilf Hall. Americans may see this image again as part of the publicity for the seminar at the ADS fall board meeting where Wilf is one of the invited speakers.
There has been recent mention of ‘Ballistic’ which is well deserved as it won the premier for doubles with yellow perianth. This specimen was exhibited by Bill Cowie.
The premier 1Y-P was a newly registered cultivar ‘Taneka’ exhibited by Brogden Bulbs.
The premier Division 9 was ‘Cronkite’ 9W-GYR hybridized and exhibited by John Hunter.
I’ll show you one of the amateur section premiers because it’s a seedling by one of young New Zealand hybridizers. It’s the amateur premier Division 3 bloom, seedling 01-38 3Y-R hybridized and exhibited by Andrew Jenkins.
That’s enough of the premiers. I’ll show you a few others and call it quits. The Innovator’s award for something really new went to John Hunter’s seedling 15/01B.
Here’s another cultivar by John Hunter with a very white perianth and very orange cup, ‘Polar Flame,’ exhibited by Malroze.
Do you remember the sharp contrast between the rim and the rest of the cup in ‘Colin’s Joy’? Here’s a newer cultivar along the same line, ‘Aisling’ 2W-WWR exhibited by Pleasant Valley Daffodils.
The convention also included visits to two growers and to a field of historic daffodils. One visit was to Trevor and Rosemary Rollinson’s. I didn’t get an overall photo of the seedlings and cultivars, but here are Don Caton and Ian Tyler amidst Trevor’s daffodil beds.
And here’s Rosemary Rollinson hosting the visitors. Rosemary made all the convention bags (in case you were wondering why there was no manufacturer’s label on the bags).
The other place we visited was Les Cleveland’s. Among other things, Les is a philanthropist and major donor to the National Daffodil Society as evidenced by being listed as Patron at the very top of the list of NDSNZ officers in the annual bulletin. The daffodil beds in the photo are just a small part of his daffodil holdings. What you see here are merely hundreds of Erlicheer, and there are a lot of other cultivars besides Erlicheer.
Here’s Les Cleveland with Brent Heath.
Having learned at Hamilton that it requires a second full day to see a big daffodil show, I went back to the Edgar Centre while everyone else went on the tour to see the historic daffodils out at Lawrence. Reports from other attendees are that I missed the photo op of the “exploding tire” that disabled one of the buses. Maybe someone else will share their photos of that excursion. Well, I’ve got a lot more photos than I’ve posted, but these few dozen should give you and idea of what you missed if you weren’t there. Here’s a last look at the South Island National Show with the camellia show in the foreground. The local Dunedin show is off the right edge of the photo.
If you have any corrections to these posts, please send them to me. The Daffnet forum allows posts to be edited even after they’ve been published.
Kirby Fong