Viewing post #1322084 by valleylynn

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