Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => NARCISSUS => Topic started by: fermi de Sousa on September 03, 2012, 03:30:53 AM
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It's officially spring here in Australia and with it a lot more daffodils!
Some more from our garden:
Kedron x 2
Sailboat
Camp Hill
Timothy David
Kojak
cheers
fermi
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A few more from our garden,
Porth Chapel
a seedling hoop - 10 W-W
A bunch of daffs ready to go to our Rock garden group meeting!
cheers
fermi
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On sunday we made it into Kyneton (Central Victoria) for the Spring Flower Show which always features Daffodils because of the Historical links.
Here's the Champions table, most of the top awards won by Ian Dyson, except for the Miniatures which went to the McConnells
cheers
fermi
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Fred Silcock is a local breeder and he usually puts up a great display - no exception this year!
Here's a look at the display and some close-ups
cheers
fermi
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Fred Silcock is a local breeder and he usually puts up a great display - no exception this year!
A few more of Fred's display
cheers
fermi
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THANK YOU Fermi for these photos - some lovely seedlings there. It's getting me excited about next season. I'll have to dash out and look at all my pots of gravel, if I look at the labels I can dream of daffs to come.
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Some more from the Show,
Best miniature: Angel's...(maybe) ..Breath or Whisper or....
White Ideal
Dawn Fraser
Corker
Katie Heath
cheers
fermi
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Even more - some unlabelled minis
cheers
fermi
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Some of Ian Dyson's other exhibits
Go Go Girl
Rad 25/6 X Pink Special X Bett Flynn
Non-competitive display x 2
Ian's entries in the open section
cheers
fermi
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Some of the floral art at the Show featuring daffs;
I think the theme for the first one was "spring" - seems appropriate!
cheers
fermi
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And some more from our garden
Narcissus scaberulus
N. obesus
N. Kenellis
Triandrus hybrid from Keira Bulbs
cheers
fermi
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Great display, Fermi. But I think it's a bit cruel putting that lamb in front of that picture of a roast!
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Fermi, the N. scaberulus does not look right. It should be smaller and with prostrate foliage.
The weather here has continued to be cold and in recent weeks very windy.
However, today it was somewhat warmer and the wind had stopped blowing.
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A few photos for Lesley!
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A few more photos.
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A few more photos. Quite a few species in this group.
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Some nice ones there, Graham.
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Yes Anne we have a few nice daffodils among our seedlings.
Below is a very fine exhibition quality miniature split cup that comes on a tiny stem as well.
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A few more photos.
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Graham,
there are some stunners there! :o
Looking forward to your next list! ;D
The Vic Daffodil Society are planning to come up to Canberra next year for the Australasian Championships so hopefully we'll get to meet in person. After our meeting on Sunday we were treated to an inspection of Fred Silcock's trial beds at Woodend.
Here are some general shots
cheers
fermi
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Still at Fred Silcock's place:
a patch of seedlings from one cross showing a degree of variation
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A pale pink "trumpet" [actually a Div 2 - large cup] which I liked
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A selection of a cyclamineus cross
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cheers
fermi
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A few [taken in haste this morning] from our garden,
Ringer
Hatdance
Puppet
Hawera
cheers
fermi
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Hurry up, spring…seeing all these flowers is making me impatient.
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A few more photos of flowers from our daffodil beds.
The N. calcicola in the photo is very odd. It has the most intense orange inside the cup. It is really a 7Y-O but it ought to be just yellow like the others we grow.
The intermediate 4W-P is a very good breeder and two of its progeny are included. The first is a true miniature 4W-P and the other is about 2mm too big to be miniature! The difference between success and failure can be marginal.
The final group of photos is of our micro mini triandus hybrids.
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I almost feel remiss because I don't think I have taken any photos of any of our good Div 11 flowers for Leslie!
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Graham, I think you mean Narcissus × tortifolius for your third photo? (in reply 23 above)
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You are correct Maggie. I was too lazy to check the spelling in my RHS Register. Unfortunately my photo editor does not let me name things "Some rare tazetta whose name I have forgotten how to spell.".
The difference between success and failure. The two really nice bulbodium flowers are about 45 mm in diameter but the one with long petals is over 50 and therefor not a miniature.
We have bred some really good exhibition quality miniature Div 5 hybrids. They are deep yellow and have good substance and petal overlap and usually have 4 florets per stem.
We have also developed some really good all yellow Div 12 miniatures that are our version of Tete-a-Tete.
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A few more seedlings.
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With a bit of rain in the last two years we had a good flowering of our bigger daffodils this year.
Our 1A-A flower was at its best. I even found another 2A-A flower nearby. While form is bad the colour is distinctive to say the least. I have done some work to improve the form.
We expect to get some good small flowers from our hybridising program. The intermediate 1Y-W is simply stunning. The intermediate 1Y-Y is also quite and advance.
The 11Y-Y is a giant of a flower on a stem that is like a tree trunk. These characteristics would meke it ideal for the cut flower trade.
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A lot of split cups first up just for Leslie!
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A few photos of some seedling doubles and some W-O seedling. Some of the seedling doubles are quite small and are used for breeding miniature doubles.
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Some miniatures.
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A few intermediates.
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A few standard seedlings that stood out.
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Maggie does anyone actually look at these photos?
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More photos.
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Last for the evening. A seedling box that is yet to flower!
It is probably close to late season now. There is still a fair few flowers to flower still. We have been working at extending our flowering season both ends.
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Maggie does anyone actually look at these photos?
I've noticed that very few seem to enlarge the photos, Graham. I think it is because it is quite easy to see the detail of the individual flowers quite well in the thumbnail and so not much is gained by clicking on them.
Also, your uploads are all larger than the recommended Forum posting size and many people do not want to bother opening a large photo that they will need to scroll around the screen to see.
Quite a lot of folks reading the posts, of course!
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I look at 'em all, and find them very interesting. Keep on posting please.
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It is probably not entirely obvious from the photos that I have been posting that that the main emphasis of our hybridising is for miniature and intermediates. We do grow standards but they are not our main interest. However they do provide colour and we are breeding for colour in miniatures. In terms of size for alpine gardens most of our intermediates and miniatures would be ideal. I am not sure that our micro minis would be suitable for open gardens but they would be ok for pots.
The height of some of our intermediates is actually miniature size and if you had looked at the photo of the stunning little 1Y-W seedling that would have been apparent. This post includes a photo of two intermediates. The first is of one of the intermediate split cups that I posted yesterday together with the intermediate 4W-Y that was posted yesterday. The edited photos can be difficult to distinguish. I noticed that I had posted an intermediate 4W-Y as a standard. It is an outstanding small flower with many layers. It also is not very tall. The photo shows some pollen which will be put to good use. We have two of these outstanding intermediate doubles.
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I look at them all as well, but only enlarge if necessary. The single bloom shots can be seen very well without enlargement. What are the nets for? In the pots of apodanthe X, the compost looks very strange and structureless - what do you use?
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Anne, I don't think I have ever had my potting mix described as very strange and structurelsss. However, it is very different to what you do I suspect. My potting mix is a mixture of sandy soil, river sand and pine fines.We don't have any problem growing our miniatures in our mix and I have been using it for many years.
I have included a photo that shows why you should be careful about your seedlings. The 11W-P is an outstanding flower but I need to rescue it into a pot.
There is another Div 7 miniature that changes colour over time. 5 florets to stem is not bad for any miniature.
I am not sure whether anybody has thought about how we produce our miniature Div 7's with colour. We have been blessed by the daffodil gods with fertile seedlings with which to breed. The 7W-W with three florest is a fertile intermediate sized flower.
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I'm looking Graham. Always interested in whats going on at my end of the gardening world.
Concur with Maggi - I scroll and enlarge the occasional picture but they are a bit unwieldy at the size you are posting. Possibly discourages one to open up too many in one sequence.
BTW -I like the kite shot. We don't get any here in Tasmania but we do have a similar raptor, the white goshawk, which is a rare colour form of the mainland's Grey Goshawk.
Thanks for your postings.
Cheers, Marcus
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I'm enjoying your breeding results, too.
I just wonder by the large numbers you keep if you have to deal with narcissus fly pest and if how to keep under control?
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Armin as far as I am aware Narcissus fly is not in Australia and if it is it is not in Canberra.
We do not lose any bulbs due to Narcissus fly.
I don't have photos which show the full extent of our daffodils but yes we have hundreds of thousands of them and we don't lose many at all. You have to remember that our climate is very similar to that in Spain.
The biggest cause of losses for us is too much rain at the wrong time of the year.
Quarantine used to hit imported bulbs with methyl bromide and that will kill anything including the bulbs if used in too high a concentration. The problem will be illegally imported bulbs from countries that have them. I was distracted and forgot to say about what the nets are for and the significance of the Black Shouldered Kite. The nets are for keeping the sulfur crested cockatoos from destroying our bulbs. They have hit some bulbs that are not under nets. However, we don't see any when the kite is visiting. He has been around the daffodil patch frequently during the last week.
If you have wondered about our proliferation of triandus hybrids it is because the daffodil gods have let us have lots of different subspecies (except a couple of subspecies we are still searching for) to assist in hybridising and allowed us to develop fertile hybrids.
Hello Marcus. Marcus grows lots of other things we like to grow.
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A few more photos.
Fortescue is a top quality intermediate here although it is registered as a standard daffodil. A long time ago we had one with pollen and I had no idea what to do with then. After many years we have again found pollen on a Fortescue but this time I knew what to do with it.
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Graham,
thanks for your reply. For me you live in a 'Narcissus paradise' ;D
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Amin, this week has probably been peak flowering time so it looks like daffodil heaven at the moment. It also smells like daffodil heaven as the miniatures are mostly heavily perfumed.
What I have not shown is our beds of standards that were not weeded this year because we never caught up from where we went on holidays in February. There are thousands of seedlings flowering in those beds.
I have done a lot of hybridising and expect to do more as the triandus, poeticus and jonquilla hybrids flower. I have a refrigerator full of flowers which equates to a lot of pollen.
We have some small poeticus flowering at the moment and a miniature pink from Glenbrook Bulb Farm is just opening. There are some nice Div 5 and 7 seedlings yet to flower so there is much to look forward to as well.
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Only a few photos today. Some excellent new seedlings still opening so there will be more photos.
There is a photo of another miniature double. While it opens 4W-Y it may change colour to 4W-P. It is of the same parentage as our miniature 4W-P. What is notable is that the pollen parent has prevailed in terms of flower colour. The seed parent is of course Y-Y.
The intermediate 7Y-Y is one of our fertile breeders. It means you can do many things not otherwise possible. The 7W-W was in yesterdays photos. The advantages of having a 7W-W are also considerable if you want to breed for colour.
The poeticus seedling is just a bit too big for miniature. I will pollinate it to cut it down to size. We have several others out that were easier to pollinate. If it works they will certainly shrink as the pollen parent was miniature 1W-W bred from N. asturiensis vasconicus (? not sure about the spelling) I will need to remove all the pollen to pollinate the one in the photo.
The GBF miniature 2W-P is a breeding triumph by our friend Rod Barwick in Tasmania. It has Pink China from Mitsch in its parentage and the other parent is Swagger.
N. cordubensis should be finished but we were behind with planting things out so it is flowering extremely late in the season. It is getting double and split cup pollen.
The big split is for Lesley. It is a bit wishy washy in the perianth. Too much pollen and not enough to put it on at the end of the season from the look of it. It needs to go onto a strong 2Y-R.
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Thanks for the explanation of your compost Graham, it's 'horses for courses', and what works best over here is completely different to what's needed in your conditions. We have kites overhead regularly too. That must be why I'm not bothered by sulphur-crested cockatoos.. ;D
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Anne, I often think I need to give our cockatoos to Lesley. The NZers ended up with our possums so why not a few cockatoos as well!
The miniature Div 8's are very promising. One looks like it will have at least 4 florets.
In the pat we have done some breeding using US flowers. The pink can intensify to such a level that it is a red.
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A few photos for Lesley!
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A few more photos.
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A few more photos.
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Final lot of photos for the night.
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I like the multi-headed ones that change colour as they open. I bet a clump would look lovely. Some of those reds are eyeopeners! :o
What's you smallest poeticus type so far?
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Anne, we have flowered some poeticus seedlings that open less than 50mm. I hope to cross with my fertile miniatures to produce seedlings that easily measure miniature. My poeticus seedlings are probably diploid so I should be able to produce fertile seedlings with colour.
The 3W-YYO is a fertile seedling that is an intermediate so I will be using it as well.
The mulitcoloured flower with 6 florets is a very good seedling. Do I like it more than our 5W-W with 6 florets or our 8Y-O with 5? Not sure as they are all superb. I spend a bit of time trying to get as many florets as possible in our miniatures.
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A few more photos.
Some of our ferals are of exhibition quality.
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A few more photos.
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More photos.
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A few more photos.
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I have attached some photos of a very late flowering N. cordubensis (normally they would have been finished a couple of weeks ago). As you will see they are the stuff that confounds daffodil judges. To me they are quite plainly split cups that occur naturally. To some daffodil judges they are not split cup but just deeply scalloped. In any case, I have put split cup pollen on them because they are most of the way there already!
While the end of the season is in sight there are still quite a few jonquilla hybrids to flower. Quickstep parentage means we have lots of late flowering jonquillas and some very nice late flowering triandus hybrids. As we have quite a few fertile ones it is time to do a bit of hybridising with them to improve quality and the number of florets per stem. The are some miniature Div 8 seedlings yet to flower. The poeticus are flowering and will need pollinating. There are lots of N. triandus and triandus hybrids flowering. N. assoanus is just starting to flower and N. dubius is very late this year. The late flowering N. rupicola are just about to flower.We are starting to see the results of our efforts to extend the flowering season.
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The end of the season is rapidly approaching now.
The feature of this is first instalment is our giant NTT.
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Instalment 2. If you look carefully you will see one of our 8Y-O flowers and the mini 8Y-O in the same photo. Both are miniature but one is closer to a micro mini.
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Instalment 3. Late season is the time for breeding Division 7 cultivars. That is because a lot of the fertile breeding material has Quickstep as a parent or in its parentage and it is very late flowering.
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Last for the evening. As you can see NTT grows like a weed for us. From dwarf forms to giant forms.
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You're lucky to have it as a weed, Graham, I find it quite difficult to keep going. Nice y-o tiddler.
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I like this new seedling, first flowering, very appealing with a good green throat and quite a small bloom.Hopefully it may be a tad smoother next year.
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I like the green eye, Paul, very nice. How big is it?
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G'day Anne, it is 60mm.I wish I knew the breeding, but 2 moves since I collected the seed, alas records are no longer reliable.It may have come through the jonquils.Unsure if it will be fertile, so will be putting its pollen onto several wildcat crosses.
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Well worth using as a breeder, I think.
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The seasons end is not far away but our season is much longer than most peoples because of the quantity of different daffodils that we grow.
Here is Part 1
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Part 2. We have been doing Div 7 breeding for some time. Most of our breeding is aimed at producing small flowers. Most of the breeders here are intermediate sized. The most interesting is the one that opens 7Y-P. These are all fertile so they can be used for breeding all sorts of different combinations.
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Some of our poeticus seedlings. Some of these will be used to produce new miniatures as they are on short stems and even when mature are only 50mm. The ones with the all red cups are very desirable as are the ones with the full perianths.
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Some more photos.
The N. cordubensis is very late flowering. In the refrigerator I had the 11W-YOO that is very nice so its pollen went on to N. cordubensis.
The Giant NTT is how you get standard sized Div 5 seedlings with long stems.
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While there is likely to be some stragglers next week this will be my final post for the season. Spring has sprung and it is time to mow and finish constructing the Dog Palace by putting the power in for the in-slab heating. As you can see from the photos it is a heavy cropping year for the apples. Lots of blossom.
I hope you have enjoyed the photos.
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Super poeticus forms, Graham.
Good to see your apple trees so well flowered - there are real problems here with apple crops - some down 80 per cent or more on last year. Looks like you will avoid that disaster.
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Maggie it is nice to get some blossom but that is about it here unless you are prepared to net your trees. Between the rosellas, sulphur crested cockatoos and bats you end up with nothing without nets. The bats are roosting in Commonwealth Park which is about 5-7 minutes to Pialligo. However, even the bats miss out if the cockatoos arrive in numbers first. The bats like ripe fruit while the cockatoos go for apple seeds and they don't have to be ripe apples.
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Many thanks Graham, a good season for you. Hope ours is a good.
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Graham,
it seems the rosellas, sulphur crested cockatoos and bats are all gourmets and appreciate the sour sweets ::) ;D
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It has been a good year for our daffodils. We have probably done more crosses than common sense suggest we ought to have done. We have had a lot of very good miniature and intermediate seedlings flower. We have tried to make as much use as possible of our poeticus seedlings. In hindsight I should have done more Div 5 and 8 hybridising but there is always next year. Our peak flowering season extends for approximately 3 months now (mid July to mid October). It will be interesting to see if we harvest more than 50,000 seed this year as it is long time since we did as many crosses.
A final photo is attached. It is part of the garden for our house. I use the spent soil from our pots and daffodil beds for the beds. I am constantly surprised at how many bulbs I miss and this year I have had to retrieve a high quality split cup jonquilla and return it to the daffodil beds.
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Hi Graham,
thanks for all the pics!
Looking forward to your next catalogue - let us know when you expect those 7W-Ps to make it onto the list! ;D
cheers
fermi
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Great stuff, Graham. Some VERY nice things there.