It is really blue.

Several years ago at the California, Murphy’s show Bob Spotts displayed a small flower which most of the judges overlooked and ignored. Graham Phillips and I, however, did a small post on it and tried to make a big fuss but nearly everyone ignored us as well.

This year at the Livermore show, Bob produced this flower again and the judges were able to pay it some more attention. This is Lima 95, presumably a seedling bred by Manuel Lima and given to Bob Spotts. The flower opens with a green perianth that soon changes to grey and then passes through to a clear blue shade. You can see the difference in the photo below between the developed flower and the freshly opened bud below.

It's blue, it's blue, it's blue.

It’s blue, it’s blue, it’s blue.

Many of Lima’s viridiflorus seedlings have perianths that mature to a pale grey color but this is a somewhat larger flower and the perianth is unmistakably blue. If we can breed this color on, it will transform daffodils as we know them. I always thought we would have to wait for genetic engineering to make blue daffs but now nature (or maybe Manuel) has done it for us.

3 comments for “It is really blue.

Comments are closed.