Recently in Hybridizing Category

Many of my Brugmansia seedlings devastated by this past winter's freeze are finally starting to bloom.  It is amazing how resilient these plants can be.   One that really caught my attention tonight was this beautiful seedling from a cross between Orange Zest and an unknown cultivar.

Orange Zest is a new cultivar I introduced and registered last fall.  It came from a cross Liz Fichtl made between Jacayna and The Chief.  These blooms have a strong resemblance to those of Orange Zest, but are larger.  They also have the same pleasant scent as orange Zest.  I know Orange Zest is in bloom right now so I'll try to grab a comparison shot of the two side by side.

This seedling is growing in full sun and thriving.  It is certainly worth watching for the rest of the season to see how it performs.

I have lots more seedlings from this cross yet to bloom, along with plenty more from other crosses involving Orange Zest.  You can bet that I'll have more Orange Zest eye candy to share as the summer goes on.

A couple of readers have asked where all my Angel Trumpet blooms come from so I decided to post a few photos of my primary growing areas.  Today's photos are from what I call my brug jungle.  This is an area where I tie the largest brugmansia seedlings to rows of rope to help keep them upright.  The seedlings are in 3-4 gallon size pots and have to be at least 6 feet tall to earn their place in one of these rows. 

This photo shows older seedlings carried over from 2008.  Many suffered damage in last year's freezes and are just now preparing to bloom.  Most of the plants tied up here are 7-8 feet tall. 

Here's a picture showing the younger seedlings that have an average age of just over a year old. My guess is that I have about 1,200 brugmansia seedlings in my "tie zone".

When these seedlings bloom they are either tagged as watch, trash, or sell.  I often wait a couple of bloom cycles before I get around to tagging them.  Some of the ones I want to watch are immediately pulled and placed in 7 gallon pots.  If any show signs of weakness or possible disease, they are yanked right away and put in my burn pile.

The ones marked "sell" are ones that are nice seedlings, but are not unique enough to be carried over into my hybridizing program.  I plan to sell some of these at a couple of spring plant shows in 2010.

I'll wait until winter before I before I start pulling the "to be trashed" ones from the mix.

I just found my first Angel Trumpet seed pod of the fall season!  One disadvantage of hybridizing brugmansia in Florida is that it is nearly impossible to get crosses to take and set pods when the temps are in the 90's.  A couple of weeks ago we had a mini cold snap that lasted for a couple of days.  The first night it was cool out I went outside and pollinated about 30 blooms.   A couple of days later the temps were back up in the 90's and breaking records.  Because of that i did not expect any crosses to take and I was quite surprised to find this lone pod tonight.

Dazed and confused is a great description for these Angel Trumpet blooms.  This is the first seedling of my cross between brugmansia Inca Sun and Masquerade to bloom.  While I was hoping for an ever-blooming yellow Masquerade type, I'm not quite ready to give up hope.  I have a bunch more from this cross that will be blooming this year and hopefully at least a couple will be worthy of holding over.  I also plan to cross any keepers I have from this cross back to Inca Sun.

After planting seeds from about 40 immature brugmansia seed pods I'm excited to report that about 1/3 already have seeds sprouting!  I'm sure more crosses will sprout in the next week or two.  This is way cool because I had some important crosses I was afraid I might have lost in the freeze. 

There are at least 30 more seeds pods that were damaged in the freeze that I plan to plant next weekend. My guess is that I have about the same number that did not get damaged that are still growing on their mother plants.

Next month the cycle starts all over when I expect to have a bunch of blooms open and ready to be pollinated.  

That is the question I keep asking myself as I gather up the numerous seed pods that were  either damaged by the recent freeze or knocked off in the process of moving and or covering plants for protection.  I trashed the ones that I knew were immature, but the ones that were weeks away from starting to ripen were saved.  What is strange is that none of the seeds pods themselves were damaged by the freeze, but the stems and branches  holding them were.  Maybe the pods have some type of natural antifreeze in them?

 

I have decided to plant all of the ones that have solid seeds.  I figure I have nothing to lose but some time and potting mix.  I'm not sure if it matters, but I plan to leave the pods sit until they turn brown and soft.  I figure if they are still green the seeds may be in survival mode and are sucking the last bit of food out of the pod.

I have planted white immature seeds before with fairly good germination.  I'm hoping I'll have some luck this time too because I had some really great crosses growing before the freezes rolled in.

Today I was able to assess the actual damage my plants incurred from our holiday freeze. My brugmansia are all sprouting new growth and in many cases, buds are beginning to form as well.  Out of the 1500 brug seedlings I have, I think I only lost one.  Almost all of my in-ground brugmansia survived too.  I had at least 75 individual  plants planted in the ground and every single one of them survived. Most just had damage to the tender growth, but a couple of the younger ones were beat up fairly bad. They froze down to the ground, but are already sprouting back up from the base.  Unfortunately we still have 6-8 weeks to go until the danger of another frost/freeze passes.  The old timers will tell you that you are safe after the first full moon in March.  I'm banking on it being the first full moon in January because it just passed.

My seed pods suffered the most in the freeze.  The main reason for this is that most of the pods were on the outer ends of the branches and hence were exposed to the coldest temperatures. My guess is that I lost about half of the pods that had set.  I still have at least 100 pods actively growing and that number will surely increase as my plants come back into bloom and I start pollinating again.  
One plant that amazes me is this Pink Perfecktion plant that has 18 seed pods on it...and it is only 2 1/2 feet tall!  My Inca Sun is the one with the most pods.  It has at least 30 pods hanging on it now, and that's after I removed a bunch of ones that were not planned.  I left 8-10 unknown pods on it so I would have plenty of seeds to play mad scientist with.  I plan to treat those seeds with various compounds in hopes of creating tetraploids. 

It is going to be a busy year for me....

That's the story with this brugmansia.  It is a cross between Miss Caylie and Genevieve and is one of several plants I have growing from this cross.  Here's what the flowers looked like when the plant first bloomed in November. It was so ugly it almost ended up in the compost pile.  Knowing that the first blooms a seedling produces may not resemble the flowers the plant produces as it matures, I decided to let the plant stay for a couple more rounds of blooms.  Over the weekend the second set of blooms started to open, and what a surprise.  The one bloom was a monster double measuring over 11 inches across and 15 inches tall.  The second bloom had just started to open when I snapped this picture and it is a triple with a separated skirt. 
As seedlings go it is a fairly large plant reaching seven feet before it  bloomed.  After this round of blooms it has earned its keep and will now be planted in the ground to be trialled for the summer.   I did sneak some pollen in the larger bloom today so we'll see if it is ready to set a seed pod. 

So much for getting a yellow double brugmansia for Christmas. The bloom is fully open now and it is white.  Darn that Grinch!

The bloom is a nice healthy sized bloom with a fragrance so I'll keep it around for a few more bloom cycles to see what it does. The day after I shot the picture below it started getting a faint pink hue to it.  Unfortunately I accidentally snapped the bloom off as I was examining the inside of the flower.  Now it is time to play the waiting game as new buds are just forming and it will be 4-6 weeks before I see open blooms again.

One of the toughest parts of growing out brugmansia seedlings is waiting for the blooms to open.  Sometimes it takes weeks for the buds to open.  Of course the more you watch them, the longer it takes them to open.  With brugs, the dominant color is white.  For me this equates to about every three out of four seedlings I grow having white blooms.  This monster bud is playing with my mind right now.  I know it is going to at least be a double bloom and it appears to have a yellowish tint to it.  There is not an abundance of double yellow  brugmansia available in the United States so having a large yellow brug would be awesome.  I don't want to get my hopes up yet because many blooms start out cream colored and then end up being solid white or pink.  It looks like it will be fully open on Christmas day, and what a great Christmas present a large double yellow bloom would be for me!