Lynn and forum readers,
As many of you know, i started breeding semps at the ripe old age of 10 (now 58!). Polly Bishop already had an extensive colllection and was starting to breed them in earnest when I rode by on my bike one day and asked what she was doing as i saw all these bags and tags and brushes. At the end of showing me how she was crossing, she said "come back tomorrow and you can cross your own." I was already a science geek and the thought of doing science was irresistible to me. From the crosses made that next day the Semps 'Silvertone' and the Jovibarba 'Emerald Spring' arose. Many would follow, including my most famous two, 'Lipstick' and 'Jungle Shadows'. The inspiration for the name Jungle Shadows came from a border bearded iris very popular at the time that was in essentially the same colors. When the semp known as "Jungle Shadows' appeared, it looked SO like it it had to be given that same name. 'Jungle Fires' is a red from 'Jungle Shadows' and has many of its qualities. Besides Polly, Pat Drown (now Pat Drown Warner) lived on my street and she also was growing and breeding semps. You may remember her 'Missouri Rose' and 'Tamberlane'. Bill Nixon would come at least once each year to see the new seedlings and give his opinions. After we had decided ones we liked , they would be shipped to Helen Payne where the final decisions on marketing them would occur. We also had a large test planting at Crane Estate in Dalton MA where the cultivars were judged for their correct names and new ones were compared with all the varieties then available in the US to make sure they were distinct.
As i was showing Cynda and Lynn around my garden yesterday I was talking about 'Dark Cloud' and 'Plumb Rose' and their origins. Polly loved my 'Jungle Shadows' and wanted one deeper and with wider leaves, but figured that we didn't know enough about semp genetics to figure out the route to the darkest colors. Instead she took the blooming rosettes from at least 8 different cultivars ('Jungle Shadws' being one) and planted them all in close proximity so that all the darkest ones could be intercrossed by the bees. She raised several thousand seedlings and the ones known as 'Dark Cloud' and 'Plumb Rose' came out of that planting but there were probably a dozen more that should've been introduced. 'Plumb Rose' had an unusual gauze effect over the leaf color that was very prominent in MA but I find it fleeting even here in cool Oregon.
I am gradually getting my cultivars back and have my first couple years of seedlings since moving to Oregon in '10. It is SUCH FUN!
Kevin Vaughn
