The late Sid DuBose was quite impressed with the positive garden attributes of both ‘Ice Follies’ and its double sport ‘Ice King’. Sid admired the vigor, rate of increase, flowering ability, and the overall bulb health. Let me hasten to point out he loathed the flower from an exhibition standpoint. One of Sids stated goals was to produce a pink or red pink cupped flower as well as a strong bicolor that had all of the positive attributes of ‘Ice Follies’ with none of the negatives (with the exception of the out of balance corona). Sporadic crosses were made from Sids “G” series through his “U” series so they extended for fifteen years.
His experience was as Larry described. Poor seed set and greatly reduced to very sparse pollen fertility. He never was able to set seed on ‘Ice King’ but felt that the pollen was more fertile than ‘Ice Follies’ although still greatly reduced in fertility. He obtained fewer than sixty seeds from ‘Ice Follies’ as a seed parent and fewer than twenty using its pollen. Looking at Sids records, my guess is that he used it as a recorded pollen parent only a very few times. I do have one seedling (DuBose U66-3) still under evaluation which is from an ‘Ice Follies’ seedling x a ‘Supreme Empire’ seedling.
Sid also felt that Grant Mitsch’s ‘Eclat’, ‘Sentinel’, ‘Supreme Empire’, etc. approached his personal target goals for ‘Ice Follies’ progeny and either due to these flowers and/or his evaluation of his flowering seedlings (possibly lack of progress and the difficulty with extremely poor substance of all the progeny), he seemed to lose interest or motivation in continuing this line of exploration.
The chromosome count of “Ice Follies’ is reported as either 14 or 28 in DaffSeek. It is also listed as both a seed and pollen parent but at no where near the level that one might expect from such a successful commercial flower. I am not doubting the recorded chromosome info but it surely does not seem to act like either a tetraploid or diploid. It seems to act more like a triploid (mule) or more like something with a weird ploidy.
Steve
PS – The pedigree chart for ‘Ice King’ in DaffSeek does not show it as a true sport but rather as a sport from an ‘Ice Follies’ seedling.