sgardener said:
Thinking about your comment while digging some trumpet bulbs. I dug and moved a Golden Splendor and the bulb was pure purple. I dug about a dozen Pink Perfection and they are yellowish with purple color on the upper part of the bulbs. Does that means the PPs has some oriental in their genes?
Yes, there's a likelihood that Oriental blood has sneaked in somewhere in time with Pink Perfection. Although the original bulbs my not have been totally purple ( Lilium leucanthum var. centifolium X L. sargentiae), but the original flowers had a green throat whereas the present day Pink Perfection have a orange/yellow throat. There were at least 3 pollen parents used over the years at OBF, the latest being pollen from the Mabel Violet Group where some of the parentage is questionable. Also interesting is that when OBF realized the color was widening, they went back and asked their biggest retailers like the original Inter-State Nurseries and Wayside Gardens to contact some of the earliest buying customers and have them collect pollen from some early production so it could be reintroduced, hopfully to tighten the color range. When you look at Pink Perfections being sold in Eastern Europe and Russia today, the flower color has a different tone about it than those being sold here; similar to Don Egger's selection but different from Jan de Graaff's selection.
Your Golden Splendor bulb color is typical original, probably because it hasn't been 'monkeyed up'. Only the red mahogany reverse of the flower has been lost. When somebody tries to introduce some red back onto the reverse, look for the bulb to change color too.
