If reading about hybridizing daffodils causes you to stare at the inside of your eyelids, now would be a good time to use your DELETE key.
On Feb 19, 2012, at 7:17 PM, John Beck wrote:
Youe seedlings are much better than mine- I plan to wipe out the bed that has been blooming- only thing worth keeping is a named variety I planted to mark the corners….
John,
Keep the faith on your hybridizing efforts. My sense is that you are “halfway there” to some potentially fine things.
My personal opinion would be NOT to “wipe the bed out” but to persevere and intercross the best of your seedlings as well as backcross to the best formed of the parents. I find that often times the F1 generation does not necessarily give the widest range of forms. Sometimes it might but not too frequently in my experience. This seems especially true with primary crosses between different sections. I suppose it could be that if one raised enough of the F1 generation from seed, more variance might show up. I think/believe it might take a really huge number of seed to have a 50-50 chance of seeing much of the potential range of expression. If I had to draw a bell curve for the F1 generation, it would be narrow in width and tall in amplitude. The F2 bell curve would be much flatter (less tall in amplitude) and much, much wider.
I do find that the reassortment of genes in the F2 generation really seems to give a much wider range of form expression with the same, relatively sparse amount of seed. In fact, I currently feel that the F2 generation and beyond is really where the most exciting range of form expression “happens”. If you can get to F2, I’d bet you might see many more acceptable things.
Keep on keeping on! Don’t give up on what you’ve done.
Steve
Steve Vinisky
Sherwood, Oregon USA