This is V99-107-2 = [(Crown Gold x Ghost) x Lutana] and is the best overall orange trumpet seedling that I’ve flowered from my breeding. Not nearly as nice as some of John Reed’s or the Radcliff’s or others. It is a true trumpet by 2 mm. It does “pale out” and becomes a 1W-Y as it matures. This flower was shown at the Murphy’s Convention but had paled out and was close to yellow for judging.
There seems to be some sort of undefined genetic linkage between trumpet length and the color value. I find that as long as the corona length stays under the length of the segments, the color value stays high. As soon as the corona length becomes trumpet (equal to or greater than the length of the perianth segments which is the definition of a trumpet daffodil), the color value in the trumpet lessens by at least a half but possibly as much as 80%. Some wonderfully colored things are being called trumpets, but many of the best colored, simply don’t measure true often being just short by a millimeter or two. I’ve made quite a number of crosses with orange or red trumpets as a goal. Obtaining deep color and true trumpet length has been “sparsely rewarding”. (Brian Duncan, THANK you, what a great descriptive phrase!). In other words, far more difficult than I expected and not a tremendous amount of forward progress.
Embarrassingly enough, the seedling below is one of the overall best I’ve flowered from this type of cross. Having a goal of white/orange trumpets or white/red trumpets doesn’t seem that close here.
Steve