Some 7 8 10’s and fertility updates

The highlight of the winter so far has been Graeme Brumley’s pink viridiflorus hybrid Brumley 915 (My Word x N. viridiflorus). It opens green and matures to a clear persistent pink. There are even hints that it might contribute to P-P. This is effectively my first pink winter daffodil.

 

The other most remarkable div 7 is 17_03MJ, Virivest crossed with a type of jonquilla, which first flowered last year but this year has produced a stem in April, May and June and still has two more to come. Unfortunately it is highly sterile.

    

Another seedling from a similar cross with Virition has flowered this year. It too is highly sterile.

One of the largest flowers of this type has just flowered. It is from Viriquilla crossed with 10_10MJ (the fertile 7Y-O) and is probably true to cross.

  

17_06MJ is even larger, interestingly also with 10_10MJ as the putative pollen parent,  but it is less substantial and has a poor stem.

The frill in some of Bill Welch’s tazettas is clearly fairly dominant. The best here is still 12_09T, which is entirely from Bill’s material, but it looks as if very nice things can be bred from it.

In the paperwhite group 18_06W has long lax foliage and is probably truly paperwhite x N. dubius. I assume it has little breeding potential which is a shame.

As regards fertility, some seedlings from the Gramon series (bred from Taztep) have now flowered. These Gramons are presumably two parts colored tazetta and one part paperwhite (TTW) and so the interesting question was whether these would breed as if they were diploid tazettas (TT) in the way that Pearl (WWT) breeds like a paperwhite (WW). The answer is that they can produce fully fertile diploid tazettas when crossed with flowers such as Autumn Colors but some hybrids are highly sterile.

18_65T is a fully fertile diploid from Gramoneed.

18_02WT is a highly sterile seedling from a similar cross.

18_51T is Gramoneed OP, probably selfed. It has some fertility and is interesting because it has a scent like that of Pearl type tazettas.

A startlingly ugly flower is 18_56T from a diploid tazetta crossed with Gramoneed. It is interesting only because it has the largest florets I have seen on a pure tazetta.

 

My conclusion is that although there are no very good seedlings in this small sample there are hints that they have interesting potential. It looks as if paperwhite can be integrated into the colored tazettas (TT) which means that the the tazettas have the same color palette as main division flowers (except that the orange is naturally more sunproof). I mentioned in my Tazquil post https://daffnet.org/tazquils/ that Gramonella has produced a reverse bicolor when crossed with jonquilla.

Thanks to Theo and Brian for their comments on inter-sectional bulbocodium hybrids. I have tried many things, undoubtedly including seedlings from graellsii, but have not discovered any miraculous bulbocodium parent. I do think the inter-sectional hybrid Gold Step is miraculous however, not just for the ongoing fertility of its seedlings but also its ability to pass on its vigor. In the last week or so a couple of seedlings from inter-sectional hybrids have flowered that are fully fertile and look very close to bulbocodiums. Their unusual earliness has obviously come from the bulbocodiums. I am hoping that these kinds of flowers will more readily hybridise with main division flowers.

09_09MB is Gold Step OP, probably selfed.

13_01MB is 09_09MB OP, probably selfed.

Such flowers have been used as parents because so few fertile hybrids are available. 13_01MB was crossed with the bulbocodium 14_09VB.

The result is 18_01MB which seems fully fertile and barely distinguishable  from a bulbocodium even though its maternal line is from Alfriston 2Y-R. I am hoping this will cross more easily with main division flowers.

 

18_13B is curiously similar in the reverse direction. 09_14Mb is Gold Step open pollinated. It open pollinated to give 15_02MB. This was used as a pollen parent onto a bulbocodium to give 18_13B, flowering in its third year. It can be hard to tell but this appears to be true to cross, and appears to be fully fertile.

 

Just as there are interesting frills in the tazettas so too are there frills in the bulbocodiums. 18_10B may also have an inter-sectional hybrid as a pollen parent. It can be hard to tell because pure bulbocodiums can also have relatively broad perianths.

 

A surprisingly large seedling has just flowered.

It was even more of a surprise to measure an even larger seedling from 2004: – when it is just the perianth one tends not to notice!

It’s now cold and frosty here. I guess to people in the Northern Hemisphere it would seem a bit like Christmas.

 

 

 

 

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6 comments for “Some 7 8 10’s and fertility updates

  1. Interesting pictures Lawrence. Thanks for putting them on the Daffnet. I enjoyed looking at them and reading your descriptions.

    Clay

  2. Yes, thanks for photographing and describing your blooms, Lawrence.  I especially LOVE that pink viridiflorus hybrid!  Wow!

  3. Hi Lawrence,
    I note that you talk of bulbocodiums but the photos suggest cantabricus or romieuxii. I believe that this is significant as I wonder if fertility is greater in these latter two groups and that they should be used rather than the straight bulbocodiums. I had Nylon flowering for over a month recently and the pot is now full of around 80 fat seed pods. This suggests that it is a fertile hybrid and may be a better option in a breeding programme.
    Dave

  4. Lawrence, thanks for sharing the photos of the work you’re doing.  Very interesting blooms.  Quite a variety in the bulbocodium hybrids.  I especially like the ones with the flat perianths, ala ‘Julia Jane’.  And that pink viridiflorus seedling is a stunner.

  5. Lawrence, are you sure that 18_65T is a diploid TT and not an allotriploid WTT? I think both types are possible.

    Your  very nice 18_01MB may be BBBN. Some of these seedlings generate NB gametes. To combine these with main division flowers to yield NNNB plants is a good idea.

    Crosses of N. bulbocodium graellsii and the so called N. b. akersianus of Brian with standard daffodils  create NNBB seedlings. Perhaps these crosses are possible also for N. bulbocodium graellsii x other tetraploid bulbocodiums like N. b. akersianus, N. bulbocodium obesus,  N. bulbocodium from Grazalema, N. bulbocodium citrinus from Bordeaux, and N. bulbocodium from Puebla de Don Rodrigo.

    Theo

  6. Thanks Clay, Becky, Mary Lou.

    Dave, I’ve used ‘bulbocodium’ in the sense of division 10 or Section Bulbocodium and don’t mean just N. bulbocodium. I really have tried a great variety of things. I assume that most of my division 10’s would give fertile inter-sectional hybrids if the crosses succeeded but here they very very rarely do so. I have some 30 or so 4 year old seedlings from exotic crosses onto bulbocodium but it looks as if all of them are open pollinated. These crosses produced only one or two seeds per pod so there was reason to hope, but all the results suggest is that my technique of examining the stigma with a magnifying glass to ensure I am the first to pollinate, deanthering and covering the stigma in pollen, works fairly well.

    Theo, I’m confident 18_65T is diploid. 18_56T may be WTT, possibly aneuploid. I think my photo labels  are now correct.

    My best guess for 18_01MB is that it is BBBB or nearly because the grains look fairly uniformly good. That is what I am hoping. I double checked the pedigree to see what mistakes might be possible and am very confident that it is correct.

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