Interesting stuff. Sounds like Mike is lucky with getting some of the 'older more colorful group'. As I understand it, the original work leading up to Harlequins was done by Dr. C. F. Patterson, head of the Dept. of Horticulture at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. According to 1969 book of Jan de graaff's, this group was obtained by intercrossing L. tigrinum, L. cernuum, L. davidii and it's variety Maxwill. ( by Dr. Patterson).
Then, (I'll quote his book here): "In order to see what could be achieved along similar, although somewhat different lines, we crossed L. cernuum with various Mid-Century Hybrids and have obtained a similar, vigorous group of complicated hybrids, introduced as the Harlequin Strain".
Now, somewhere, I've read that some of Dr. Patterson's original group material was also incorporated in the development of the Mid-Century Group. I'll look for that tonight. History of cultivar development during this time frame is very interesting to me because most of the time it's poorly documented or not documented at all. It's the evidence that a lot of stuff went on but very little documented proof of it.
It sounds like mike could have a lot of fun crossing these.
