My digital camera just has a macro lens right now but I'll give it a go. You may have to walk me through the pictures thing.

The seedlings really begin to show themselves pretty early, although the very dark ones tend not to be until they get a bit more mature. Some of my early favorites from the '11 seed are seedlings from self-pollinating 'Killer', which I think has lovely intense color at the leaf bases. The seedlings are a good bit larger than all the other batches and the leaf base colors are all intense but quite a range from red to purple. I've always liked the contrasting leaf base patterns and that's why 'Ruby Heart' that has red on silver is one of my favorites.

We'll have to do a "judging session" of the seedlings next spring. The seedlings from the '10 seed should be big enough clumps that we can make some decisions on their fate by that point. I'll try to get in touch with Gary by that point. The colors have faded enough now that it's not quite as good a show on the semps although it is good to note which ones still are good. Of course the daylilies are starting to show. Have had some nice seedlings there too but many of these lines are F6 and F7.

Kevin

I was just out making crosses between 'Spinner' and 'Pacific Knight'. (The latter is the largest I have blooming at the moment but there are several other bigger ones and darker ones just waiting to bloom.) I might not get me that 10" cobweb out of that cross but I'm betting these could be good-sized ones as 'Spinner' is pretty good-sized for a cobweb. Both have some red in the leaves too, so I'm hoping. Of course the best laid plans sometimes don't work out as planned. Pollen formation is a little late her in OR compared to MA. in MA, the newly opened flowers would be ripe with pollen fairly early in the morning and there would be bees working them quite early. Here the sacks seem to be a bit delayed so that it's really ~930-10AM when the anthers really dehisce well. I am covering the prospective parents with paper bags and that seems to work well. We are in a span of 7 dry days so I should be safe.

There is a small row of seedlings from 'Hot Shot' that i self-pollinated last year and all seem to have a bit of cobweb. i don't expect anything too big from that group though as the pedigree is 'Marietta' X 'Denise's Cobweb' and all of these are smallish. 'Marietta' is quite red though so there might be some interesting segregants. As I was looking at therm, I was remembering how 'Hot Shot' was named. I spent one year at Texas A&M in the Genetics Section and the chair of the genetics section had several unusual pets, including a skunk that they had dubbed 'Hot Shot'. Always on the lookout for a good plant name, the red tufted seedling was quickly named for that skunk and sent off to Helen for introduction.

OK all of you get busy crossing!

Kevin

Wow! Loved reading this thread. I can't wait for pictures. Cannot imagine knowing so much about these small lovable plants.
Go for it Lynn! You can do it! I know you can.

Kevin, I'm really excited to see pictures of some of your new crosses! I'm anxiously awaiting that 10" black cobweb too!

Can I take the first photo of it Kevin?

Kevin and all, I'm sharing a couple of pics of my hirta Emerald Springs mentioned by you above. This year, my hirta's are watermarking and that's making for nice pics. I think I'm going to need to thin these soon though.

Emerald Springs

Twit, those photos are lovely.
On my way to add them to the database.

Thank you for the feedback. I liked these myself.

That's really a gorgeous, healthy color of green - good watermarks too. Nice plant!!

Kevin, did you have a Sempervivum 'Emerald Spring'? I find references that shows you did.

Lynn,

Yes J. 'Emerald Spring' is a hirta x sobolifera (now a subspecies of hirta) cross. It has the form of the hirta and the size of the sobolifera. Neither of these parents bloom very often but Polly Bishop had large clumps and there was good bloom on both in order to make the crosses. These roller species seem to bloom better in a hot year. Think that means everyone except Oregon! Actually today it's even sort of hot here.

Enjoy!

Kevin

Hi, Kevin,

Since you've been at this so long, I thought I should ask about how you handle the weeding problem. I spend a lot of time weeding my semps in pots. I try to never let seeds set on any weeds that crop up, make periodic passes to remove them all, use a top coat of fine stone, yet the weeds always seem to find a way into the pots. By the time I'm thru all the pots weeding, the ones at the beginning of the line need attention again. We have a nasty wood sorrel (oxalis) here that spreads easily and never seems to go away, there is always grass and a few other repeat offenders.

-t

tcstoehr said:

Why 'Nico'? Are you trying to get a pinker 'Nico'? I could understand that... mine was pretty dull most of the year. Is there something about 'Nico' that makes it a desirable parent?

JungleShadows said:Tim,

My Nico was pretty good all year but mine is in a lot of sun. I like the rosette shape too.

Nico has darker leaf tips and quite red so it was a similar pattern to the pink in Slabber's seedling. Not many semps have it in that pattern. Also crossed Nico with Fire Glint and Roasted Chestnuts for more with intense tip colors. Would have used Fernwood too but it didn't bloom. Next year for sure.

Had a very interesting seedling from Roasted Chestnuts X Jungle Shadows that is sort of a very large, much more pointed leaved, and better color retention version of Roasted Chestnut that inspired these other crosses. That one has very good color retention (even now) and makes very neat clumps.

Hope that helps! I had done lots of really big purples the last couple years so wanted to do something different. Sometimes you have to have the imagination of an artist and the genetic knowledge combined in one to get just what you want. Of course even with that, I often get surprises (good and bad!).

Kevin

JungleShadows said:The heuffs are fast becoming my favorites too. They make the neatest mounds and never need to be dug and divided. Perfect for the lazy gardener. Best of all they seem to look good year-round and almost regardless of the weather.

Although one thinks of them as rather similar I'm getting a large variety of shapes and sizes in the seedlings from squatty forms to upright and some very tiny (1" maximum) to over 6". Colors from gold, pale green, all sorts of red and purple tips to green, full reds, reds edged with green, purples, purples edged with green, brown, and near black. My favorite named cultivar is 'Bros' but it is a stinker of a parent. Really BLAW seedlings! That is the exception though as the seedlings are generally really nice. Virtually any of them would be great garden plants.

My only complaint is that they are the WORST to cross as you have to pull off the the petals in order to do the crosses whereas the true semps can retain their petals and the anthers are easy to remove. With them I generally do controlled self pollinations so I move pollen from one flower to another one where the the stigmas are receptive.

Now if I can get them to the 12" sizes that I'm getting my true semps I'll be even happier. Give me a year or two...

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Yes, Smith showed way back in '74 that semp seeds need to spend 2 weeks at 40 F (4C) to have good germination. To get this I just start my seed pots outdoors when I know they'll have some of that weather or keep the seed in the crisper portion of the refrigerator for a few weeks before planting. Both work like a charm.

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Bev, I think the feud between Bill Nixon and Peter Mitchell started out with the Dalton Project. Mrs. Crane paid at least a thousand dollars, maybe more, to get examples of everything in Peter Mitchell's collection. The plants he sent were tiny increases. sometimes one tiny increase in a bag. Because of their small size it took at least a full year longer to evaluate and that made EVERYONE pissed off. All the US nursery people wanted their plants verified as correct too so they were all sitting in limbo as these tiny pieces grew on. Fortunately Mrs. Crane's conditions were ideal and in two years she had plants of good size in order to make the evaluations and also share a piece of all the correct plants with each nursery. She sent out ~300 different cultivars to each nursery so, at least at time point, all of our names were in agreement.

When the Sempervivum Fancier's Association started that pissed off Peter Mitchell against the "American upstarts". It's a wonder we didn't throw Peter's semps into Boston Harbor!! We Bay Staters have been known to do such things in the past!

Greg, we started the robin letters in '68 and that was the beginning of the US movement. That actually pre-dates the Sempervivum Society. It was not a formal society though. Just a way of keeping all of us in touch with each other. All the US biggies were in it.

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Tim,

The latest taxonomic revision puts all of the Sempervivum and former Jovibarba into Sempervivum. They did retain two sections of the genus so the former Jovibarba are in the Jovibarba SECTION now.

The cultivars are mostly a mix so it's just S. 'Lipstick'. An exception would be ones from a single species such as S. calcareum 'Extra'.

All of the heuffelii cultvars are derived from a SINGLE SPECIES. Thus, they can be designated S. heuffelii 'Hot lips'. This will also clear up the cultivar names for which we have both a heuffelii and semp with same name. These would be written as S.'Jade' and S. heuffelii 'Jade'.

Hope that makes it clear!

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Aymon Correvon and Purdy's 90-1 look to be wulfenii X montanum. Both of the parets are diploids and must be different enough in chromosome organization that meiotic cells get odd numbers of chromosomes and fragments. Most years I get a bunch of chaff from these two hybrids. In fact, I was looking at my old notebook yesterday and I tried for three years, from '69-'71 to get seedlings from Purdy's 90-1 and nothing. I'm hoping the bees in Oregon are smarter. Fingers crossed!

Sometimes when you get a seedling out of one of these mules the seedling behaves with much higher fertility. So I just need ONE (or two is better so I could cross the two of them!). Would love to see a plant with more the rosette form of wulfenii but with the wonderful velvety leaves from montanum.

Kevin

tcstoehr said:Looking at some of these tightly-balled rollers makes me wonder something. Do they photosynthesize equally on both sides of the leaf? The other semps make me wonder the same thing. Agaves and Echeverias too.

JungleShadows said:Tim,

Yes some of these have photosynthetic parenchyma on both sides of the leaves. The ones from subspecies hirta have the most wde-open rosettes whereas the ones from arenaria are mostly a ball.

Of course all of them fix CO2 by the CAM pathway so they accumulate malic acid at night and then utilize the carbon during the day when they can utilize the energy from the light reactions.

The rollers do not like my native soil that well but they LOVE the soil mix that I use in the raised beds.

Kevin

Now that we ALL have homework for the next workshop...ahem.....
I have been wondering what genetic factors are at play that make most Semps a different color in the winter than in the summer.I have quite a few like Viking , Treebeard and Reinhard that do not change. Viking gets a bit lighter in Aug. but it is just a lighter shade of the same color it has in March. I tell customers that ask about it, that because the day and night temperatures are closer to the same in Aug, the plants are not breathing as deeply as they can when nights are cold and that causes them to become sort of anemic. Hows that for a story??? I know that this year has produced some very intense colors but my Blue Boys right now are very deep burgundy...they do not look like Blue Boy at all. I also notice that on Sempervivum Liste, many kultivars look like 2 different plants at different times of the year. Pink in spring and pale green or blue in July Aug. Or purple on winter and green in summer. This is something that many of my customers have complained about over the years. I am wondering if some species have one or other of these traits and pass it on to all their offspring through many hybridizations (and we are stuck with it)... or Is there something we can do ( like back crossing) or ???? to get more year round stable color. Kevin your thoughts greatly appreciated.