One of the stated, long term goals of my friend and daffodil mentor, the late Sid DuBose, was to develop a very early pink. Sid recognized that there was a built in, ready market with high demand for a pink cut daffodil that could be gotten to market in time for Valentine’s Day. Sid lived in mid California (Stockton) and made many, many crosses trying for a pink that would consistently flower by February 1st.
The seedling below is my cross and does not flower early enough to meet the goal although it is of exhibition quality. Has ‘Pink Silk’ on both sides along with Sid’s ‘Raspberry Rose’ and the extra early ‘Dear Me’.
Steve
V05-53-4 Early 2W
Steve,
Quite a lovely flower! As far as your getting a pink-cup which blooms by February 1, I suggest you might need to breed with one of the fall-blooming species.
Bob
Steve what a splendid flower and with a classy pedigree.
I have been breeding early pinks since I first started hybridizing (several decades ago) and have several nice super early white – pinks that should match your Valentines day flowering date. A search of the daffnet archives for the June and July months 2012 and 2013 should show some of these.
Well done for a quality early pink Steve .Daffs for Valentines Day in N Z would probably last about a day . Graham Phillips is rather modest about the great work he has done breeding early pinks . MY WORD has tended to give earlier flowers than DEAR ME and features in most of Grahams breeding .His GEE PINK is always the first for me , dates from my photos on Daffseek are 29 June , 16 July and 27 July .Graham has been introducing red/pink blood into his seedlings and is slowly moving this colour into earlier dates .Breeding for early market flowers is a slow but rewarding task ; my records show that the seed set in the cooler winter / early spring months is considerably lower than main season crossing – temperature related .
John Mclennan in very warm and dry Otaki , — getting ready to start H W T .
Thanks for your comments Bob, Graham, and John!
Bob, If I was still in California I would be really working on an early pink for the Feb 1st bloom date target. Of course, your point about using Fall/Winter bloomers as parents is well taken and an important point. I am much less enthused over the goal here in Oregon. We often have the coldest weather of the year in January. My feeling or observation is that both foliage and buds up that early would mean hitting the date might only be once or twice a decade. Just my opinion.
Graham, LOVED ‘Gee Pink’. Sid would have been over the moon (as am I)!!! Thanks so much for the DaffNet Archive pointer. Time well spent here looking and drooling! Hope you are all doing great.
John, so very much appreciate your comments. I also loved your ‘Chorister’ x
‘Phillips Rosewood seedling’. I really like ‘Rosewood’ here and consider it much under rated and little known here. What a pity! Early red/pinks would be worth their weight in gold! I’d simply love to see photos of the earliest of this type. Strongly agree that seed set and even fertility is temperature and weather related. Thanks again for your post!!
Hi Steve,
I too think that early div.1-3’s are a speciality for places with mild winters. The season begins about mid August here. A quite different growing habit would be needed for them to jump across to May. I grew Early Bird for a a season but it was very unhappy. I have a couple of seedlings from it that are not early at all.
Hanocks list Paxton as an early-mid red pink. (For some reason I imagined it was one of yours Graham). I haven’t bred much from it and I keep planning to replace it with something else but I can’t bring myself to do it because it is such a good indestructible garden flower.
Yellow trumpets crossed with pinks can show pink and these can be intercrossed to give white pinks. John’s post on Yellow Gold suggests it could be useful in this regard if you have a decade or so to spare. Have put a picture of (Temple Gold x Kalimna) x (Nynja x Decoy) at the end of my latest post to illustrate.
So beautiful no matter when it blooms.