A cool wet period in summer triggered the elegans hybrids so it now just a matter of making sure they don’t dry out and protecting them from the most intense heat
For those interested, this season’s bulb and seed catalogs have finally been put on my website.
Hello Lawrence,
Do they bloom in autumn, do they aslo bloom in Spain in autumn? in all these hybrids is N. elegans the mother?
Thank you
Hi Rafael,
Thanks for your interest. I always appreciate the photos you post but don’t always say so. I was surprised by the latest jonquil bulbocodium wild hybrids. Crosses such as this have mostly failed for me. I may have some seedlings coming.
The hybrids pictured will always bloom in the autumn.
In my experience N. elegans will always flower in the autumn even if it doesn’t rain. I think it is triggered by a drop in temperature. The other autumn flowering tazettas I have will not start growing until they are watered. Some of these do not need a strong drop in temerature to trigger growth. Elegans never flowers this early here but its hybrids with other tazettas can do so easily. First Stanza, for example, can be forced just by putting it in the shade and watering it.
15_03T is 09_13T x Gold Stanza. 09_13T is my earliest Autumn Colors, 8Y-O.
Gold Stanza is on Daffseek. Coincidentally, the photo is of it flowering dry in a packet. I think it is a sibling of First Stanza and is N. elegans x Soleil D’Or.
14_03T is (N.elegans x Union Road) x (First Stanza x ?). Union Road was a diploid tazetta 8W-Y collected in Western Australia – probably N.t. lacticolor or similar.
My guess is that, for early hybrids, it makes no difference whether N.elegans is the seed or pollen parent.
Thanks for posting these photos, Lawrence. I always enjoy photos of autumn-blooming daffodils, even if I can’t grow them.
For those interested in Lawrence’s catalogs, they’re also posted in Dafflibrary.com.
I love the sparkle in the perianth on these, Lawrence. Lovely!
Thank you for the info Lawrence. In my field experience in Spain, N. jonquilla don’t makes hybrids with N. cantabricus, even when they grow all of them mixed. I tried many times to find it in the wild without success. But in the other hand N. fernandesii, makes hybrids very easily, although due the phenology N. fernandesii as it blooms after N. cantabricus, it usually acts as mother, and very few times N. cantabricus is the mother.
Thanks everyone.
Rafael,
Your comments about fernandesii bulbocodium hybrids are interesting. The jonquilla pollen parent of my few putative bulbocodium x jonquilla seedlings probably has fernandesii in its ancestry.