Alex,
Love that pink in your first pic!
Lynn,
I have yet to see a bloom on the oddly shaped pink velvet, absolutely will do some work with it when it does though, and selfing would likely be my first thought. Actually I'd also be interested to see if crossing that one with the other obscure pink would produce a variety of funky pinks, I'm sort of beginning to think I've discovered some kind of mutant gene associated with pink here that to my knowledge has never been explored in the plants we've seen so far. Not entirely certain that the mutation is the same in both plants but it does look similar, some sort of irregularity in leaf width during formation.
Here's a photo of a bigger rosette from the tawny pink…
I like that I've stumbled upon something different in these pinks, and it may not be for everyone but I think they're pretty cool, also interesting to note that the deformation is seasonal, during the winter you can't tell them apart from the normally shaped plant they were sports from. The velvet on the other hand was not a sport, every rosette from it's initial seedling has the odd form.
Yes there is another yellow seedling in the photo of my favorite yellow, it was a sibling that I'd first selected from the group because of its neon yellow and good offset production, unfortunately it suffers more than marginally during the winter, always bounces back, but I'd hate to release a "rotter" actually it's sibling is about where I draw the line on rot, I'd rate it a C+ or a B-, it looses a few leaves but retains its size for the most part, the other yellow dies back to about 50-35% of its maximum size, putting it in the F+ D- bracket in my opinion. I usually toss anything that looses more than a third it's mass from winter dieback, unless it does so gracefully with interesting colors from senescing Fall leaves which don't leave a big mess. Both of those seedlings are however exceptionally bright, the top two brightest yellows selected from a group of three hundred. Neither's perfect but I can't bare to part with them, it's possible with all the 'Gold Nugget' seedlings coming to market we may stop seeing yellows from other sources and in a way I think that makes plants like these particularly valuable.
That Red is just an all around good plant, the lashes are a definite contribution to it's look. Always red! Her main rosette is blooming this year, I'll have to do something with it.
-Sol
