For those of you suffering from the winter cold, we in Southern California have the opposite. This is the worst drought on record and we have had hardly any rain. In addition temperatures are unseasonably high and we have also had to contend with desert winds (called Santa Anas). Last week temperatures reached the high 80Fs nearly every day and humidity was under 10%. The Spring daffodils are now one month ahead of schedule and who knows what will be left for the shows. But enough of the whimpering and moaning. There are a lot of new miniature daffodils flowering this year and some are quite interesting.
N. fernandesii x N. lusitanicus
The first picture shows a row of N. fernandesii x N. lusitanicus. Can you figure out which is the one worth keeping?
‘Lightning Fire’ x Spott’s seedling
This is a keeper provided it survives. Bred from ‘Lightning Fire’ a 2O-R by a shapely jonquilla seedling that grows near Bob Spots’ front gate. I think it is related to Bob’s ‘Ho Ho Kam’ but only makes one flower to the stem The flower measures 44 mm. Note that the three outer tepals are a rich yellow but the three inners are rather like ‘Clouded Yellow’ being a diffuse mix of yellow and cream. I think that if it developed in cooler weather the corona would be darker and the petals might have a flush of orange. This is the second of the cross to flower and there may be another dozen to bloom this year. i sure hope it comes back next year.
Miniature 2W-P seedling
There are not many miniature division 2W-Ps around. This is a first bloom and my cross book is obviously wrong because it says ‘Larger than Life’ (a 128 mm 2W-P made by Sid Duboise) x ‘Cape Point’ (another 2W-P measuring about 124 mm made by Brian Duncan). I thought I would make giant pinks and surprise my friends. This seedling, however, comes in at around 40 mm, so I must assume that either my grandchildren or the local parrots (we have a flock of about 70) have been helping with the labels. (Actually the parrots always seem to avoid my garden TG.) But this seedling looks promising and it is making two spikes for the maiden bloom. The pink could be a little stronger but then every seedling could always be a little better :-).
Harold