aaahhh haaa
Thank you Kevin. I have had enough problems with the "fuzzy" ones in the winter. No interest in making the problem worse.
I have figured out the Jungle Shadows problem. Someone switched the Jungle Shadows and Dark Cloud tags For sure Dark Cloud looks NOTHING like Jungle Shadows but the tag company put the Dark Cloud picture on both tags. Another reason not to use those tags.
Thanks for your patience

Reinhard is so reluctant to bloom. It is still working at pushing up bloom stalks. in the mean time, Ali Botousch , and several other arachnoids have burst into bloom. Xorna is blooming and so is Direcror Jacobs.
Xorna x Reinhard....hmmmm....maybe not. Reinhard x Ali Botouch .....maybe...? Might shorten those stolons!
@jungle shadows Rienhard seems so stable with no variation, What do you think could happen if it was selfed. Could it get bigger?
I don't have Killer let alone Killer going to flower. OK maybe not a good idea. Red and green in watercolor painting makes really ugly brown, does that work in semps too?
I am really amazed at the dark colors that some of Sue Thomas" hybrids have. Do you have any thoughts on how she got threre. I have been looking for a site with all her hybrids but no luck so far.

Here you go Jo Ann, a list of 256 of Sue Thomas hybrids. http://garden.org/plants/group...

And there might be more in this list. http://sempervivum-liste.de/no...

Jo Ann, I think part of the colors on Sue Thomas' things are due to the English climate. They don't look that brilliant here in Oregon, at least the ones I have. 'Purple Dazzler' is the brightest of the ones I've seen but I have a lot more intense seedlings.

Greens with purple tips tend to give greens with purple tips. Purple and red are at least semi-dominant to green. Sometimes you get bicolors, sometimes full colors.

Kevin

Thanks Lynn going to look there now.
Thanks Kevin....what migh make good crosses is one thing . What you can get to flower at the same time is another. Fortunately the semps spin the blossoms out over a period of time.
The English and Irish climate affect the colors in Crocosmia too compared to here.

Kevin, is there any place I can find all these gene/ phenotype relations listed? Would that be part of your book?

For the moment I'm crossing everything available for flowering. I tend to avoid arachnoidem x arachnoideum as I don't want any more arachnoideum. At the moment there are like 4 or 5 arachnoideum open and everytime a non-arachnoideum semp opens the flower, its pollen will be used for all arachnoideum available. I already did about 30 different combinations with the 7or 8 varieties flowering at the moment and there are about more 20 varieties to flower. About 1/4 of my collection will have flower stalks this year.

Last year I tried a lot of semp x jovibarba roller crosses and the yield of seedlings is disappointing - I think I saw one seedling that might also come from a bee cross. This year I will keep jovibarba separate from semp. As there are only two jovis flowering that are anyhow very similar looking, I will definitely concentrate on semps.

Michael,

Bill Nixon and I wrote a paper way back in '72 on what was known of the genetics of Sempervivum and I'll do a much more extensive update in my book, although a lot is still not known. We went through some of the differences in crossing diploids and tetraploids this spring in my class as I was able to show how the segregations of traits differed, depending upon the ploidy of the parents.

Crossing the Semp and Jovibarba type semps is difficult. Favarger did the best with this. In this limited sample if you cross diploid semps with the heuffs or rollers you have a BETTER chance to get progeny. Still the % of success is low. In some way this goes against the usual logic as generally using at least one tetraploid in a cross gives a better chance for something more normal in chromosome composution to ccur in the hybrid.. All the heuffs and rollers are diploids. The progeny often are abnormal in rosette characteristics and the blooms are sort of half way in between the two groups, pinkish flowers but fewer petals and toothed edges to the petals. When I saw Weirdo bloom a couple of years ago I thought it looked like such a hybrid too. The cross was allegedly Emerald Spring X self and all but two of the seedlings looked like a typical roller. Weirdo and the sibling ever had a normal meristem and they had characteristics of a semp. In those days I didn't clean my tweezers off between pollenations and I'm betting I transferred a little pollen from a true semp onto Emerald Spring.

I agree that arachnoideum X arachnoideum will give you more of the same. However, you can cross arachnoideums onto ones with tufts and that will give you some interesting seedlings.

Hope that helps!

Kevin

Kevin, how do you tell which ones are diploids and which one are tetraploids?

You can't tell by looking, you have to go to the literature and pick them out. Certain ones are diploid like calcareum whereas others like the arachnoideums have both ploidies and tectorums are mainly tetraploid. The French web site has most of the chromosome counts.

Kevin

Thank you Kevin.

So it will remain trial and error if you're dealing with NOIDs. I checked last years crossing and this years seedling lists - I might have about 7or 8 roller x semp seedlings from 4 different crosses. I will monitor them more closely once they're grown up and am curious to see their flowers.

I'm wondering if we could have more specific directions to "the French website" with chromasome counts.

I haven't found the actual topic on the French site yet.
@JungleShadows can you give us a link to that topic?

It's on the Sempervivophila web site. The translation to English is a little rough in places but the information is there.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin!
Although I do not have the desire, time, patience, land, need, etc., other wherewithal, to even concern myself with hybridizing plants, I appreciate learning of that site lots of good info!

and this
http://stalikez.info/fsm/semp/...
is hilarious and true

Thanks for that one Dirt...a good laugh.
I think the translation is a bit rough because the French is extremely convoluted and difficult.
Can't wait to see what they do with a technical discussion of ploidy and chromasome counts

And English isn't?
I'm certain that translations from our end are rough too. The ploidy is presented on another page near the one I linked to. If I remember right, it was the one right above it in the navigation tree on the left panel -- not nearly so amusing though

Here you go Jo Ann.
http://stalikez.info/fsm/semp/...

Wow Lynn Thanks some info in those charts to really look at.
Dirt, I wasn't criticising the French language compared to English. English is a nightmare language for foreigners to learn. I have dyslexia and it is a night mare for me too. I can read some simple ordinary French but I could not understand a word of that article.
Numbers are the same

@JungleShadows Kevin I have a few gold bug blooming. If I were to self them would the recessive genes be so strong (or week) that I would end up with a bunch of heuffs like Cmiral's Yellow Semp. The only other Heufs that I have flowering are very dark colors. I am having trouble seeing anything atractive in a cross like that. Supose I could get dark center and gold tips???
Your input would be very welcome.

Jo Ann