Hi!
First let me comment on a couple of my names. As many of you know Helen was a Mennonite and when i shipped the plant known as 'Devil's Advocate' for her to grow she was rather torn as she wasn't sure she wanted anything with the devil in the name as her fellow parishioners might object to "glorifying Lucifer" as she described it! Pat's original name for 'Missouri Rose' was 'Wine and Roses' but it came out as 'Missouri Rose'! Helen must have mellowed by the time 'Mulberry Wine' was introduced as its name was unchanged!'Minaret' was introduced by Betty Bronow as Helen didn't want to "celebrate Islam".
Speaking of 'Mulberry Wine', I think I know a bit more about what happened to a sib of this plant. 'Mulberry Wine' was from bee seed of a Skrocki seedling he numbered #51 but blooming right next to it was a plant of 'Minaret'. When I sent 'Mulberry wine' I also sent the sibling that was labelled "Skrocki 51 x probably Minaret" and I'm guessing in the moves and sales this plant assumed the name 'Minaret' and was distributed as such. if you look at the Japanese web site there are two 'Minaret's pictured. One is the right plant, a silvery blue with dark tips, and the red-based one which is most likely the 'Mulberry Wine' sib. If you have the red-based plant, please adjust your label. It too is a beautiful plant and was about the time Helen was selling off to the new owners. It is a lovely plant and probably should be given a real name.
'Sharon's Pencil' was named because i NEVER had a pencil and I was always borrowing a friend's pencil. She suggested I name a plant for her and I said "I should really name it for your pencil." It was one of the largest of my early hybrids, getting to 8" across and it bloomed easily and had not ugly flowers. I don't think we need every semp red nor do I want them all small.
'Just plain Crazy' started out as a very erratic plant. it was the only seedling i ever obtained from 'Minto's seedling' so I'm betting that plant was probably of mixed ploidy. Some plants of 'Just plain Crazy' continue the erratic condition, whereas others are more normal tufted types.
Emerald Spring is a hybrid from a hirta which at the time we called "histoni" X sobolifera (now a subspecies of hirta). There were several from this cross, one or two were like multi-leaved hirtas. Helen was delighted that 'Emerald Spring' was the colors of hirta but the size of sobolifera in the hybrid.
Bill Nixon and I published a paper on the inheritance of a least a few characteristics in an early Sempervivum Society publication (~'72) that included what we knew at the the time. That would be a good start. Since then I've gotten a PhD in botany/ genetics but I haven't had a chance to put my talents toward the semps until I moved to Salem in '10. This last season I purposely selfed a number of cultivars to see what sort of things segregated out of them so I could learn a bit about the genetics of these plants. The cobweb that is shown in the picture is from a tufted type that has been selfed. It was a rather large plant and I hoped to get a very large red cobweb out of it if the genes for cobwebbing and size segregated independently. i'm HOPING they do!
The list published on the Slovenian site is mostly right although they have credited Shirley Rempel with 'Jungle Fires'. She did introduce it for me but it is definitely my hybrid.
OK I'm turning the tables on you LYnn. What did you like/ find interesting when you came to my yard??
Kevin
