At our local North Star Lily Society education meeting today, hybridizer Brian Bergman was the speaker. He showed some pics of his Blue Flash, while mentioning that it really is purple, and the blue come from light reflecting off a certain way. His actual words were "reflecting mainly at the edges", but I believe what he actually means is off the surface edge anywhere on the petals, rather that just the outside edge that we normally think of as "edge". In this respect, Blue Flash is aptly named in my opinion, as the blue tint can come and go depending on the reflecting light. Brian said Blue Flash is most likely an LA. He had two instances where he lost massive hybridizing records. One when his car was stolen with his record book inside, and another time when he had a crew of young assistants helping him plant seedlings in the field, and they gathered all the labels in a single pile "for" him. Crying Apparently Blue Flash was one of these lostlings.
The title of his presentation was "Quarks and Quirks", which was about the really great hybridizing results (the quarks) he's had and the duds (the quirks) that come along for the ride. It could have been kinda boring, but he continually inserted tidbits of hybridizing advice and commentary, and there was no shortage of questions from the audience, either.
Some take-aways:
---- in the majority of cases, it is the pod parent that contributes most of the structure to the seedling:
---------- leaf and stem characteristics
---------- inflorescence shape and how pedicels arrange.
---------- height
---------- etc.
---- in the majority of cases, it is the pollen parent that contributes more to the flower form.
---- Brian does not protect his crosses from contamination, either before or after the deed is done. He feels the mechanical futzing. etc., can impede optimal pollination.
.........................In his view, I assume, the end result is more important than the surety of knowing how it got there.
---- LA x A will usually yield offspring that look more asiatic than LA.
---- TO x LA will yield offspring that look more like LA.
---- T x A (T is pod parent) is more apt to be successful than A x T.
---- germinate seeds of interdivisional crosses in low 60s F. Once they are up, you can move them to higher temps. He seemed quite confident that germination of these
..........................seeds will fail at 70 F and warmer.
