I was just out making crosses between 'Spinner' and 'Pacific Knight'. (The latter is the largest I have blooming at the moment but there are several other bigger ones and darker ones just waiting to bloom.) I might not get me that 10" cobweb out of that cross but I'm betting these could be good-sized ones as 'Spinner' is pretty good-sized for a cobweb. Both have some red in the leaves too, so I'm hoping. Of course the best laid plans sometimes don't work out as planned. Pollen formation is a little late her in OR compared to MA. in MA, the newly opened flowers would be ripe with pollen fairly early in the morning and there would be bees working them quite early. Here the sacks seem to be a bit delayed so that it's really ~930-10AM when the anthers really dehisce well. I am covering the prospective parents with paper bags and that seems to work well. We are in a span of 7 dry days so I should be safe.
There is a small row of seedlings from 'Hot Shot' that i self-pollinated last year and all seem to have a bit of cobweb. i don't expect anything too big from that group though as the pedigree is 'Marietta' X 'Denise's Cobweb' and all of these are smallish. 'Marietta' is quite red though so there might be some interesting segregants. As I was looking at therm, I was remembering how 'Hot Shot' was named. I spent one year at Texas A&M in the Genetics Section and the chair of the genetics section had several unusual pets, including a skunk that they had dubbed 'Hot Shot'. Always on the lookout for a good plant name, the red tufted seedling was quickly named for that skunk and sent off to Helen for introduction.
OK all of you get busy crossing!
Kevin
