First, I did not find any documentation (yet) that would indicate Dr. Patterson's crosses were incorporated into the Mid-Century pool prior to de Graaff's Harlequin project, even though it seems every 'Tom, Dick and Harry' Asiatic and Asiatic hybrid available were introduced at various stages of the lengthy Mid-Century project. Therefore it would seem, by default, that both Dr. Patterson's stock and de Graaff's Mid-Century group had a lot of ancestry in common.
As noted in my previous post, Dr. Patterson developed the first Harlequins by intercrossing L. tigrinum, L. cernuum, L. davidii var. Maxwill. Dr. Patterson also crossed L. davidii var. willmottiae and L. cernuum. The pollen from this cross was used on various seed parents such as L. davidii 'Oriole and several Stenographer clones and that offspring showed a high degree of virus resistance. I should note here that in all of my old books and publications these are referred to as Patterson Harlequins, never the de Graaff Harlequins. What Jan de Graaff did was cross some selected Mid-Century stock with L. cernuum and registered the cross as Harlequin. The de Graaff Harlequins were very similar to the Patterson Harlequins--but they were not as virus resistant. It was reported that nearly an entire field Mid-Century parent stock was lost and only those with the highest L. davidii background survived. Most Harlequins produced by Oregon Bulb commercially at some point were from crossing the much more virus resistant Edith Cecilia with Lemon Queen, both of these being the offspring of L. davidii var. willmottiae and L. cernuum crosses. This answers the last question in the registry definition and, yes, there were 'two' Harlequins.
The fact that Jan de Graaff and the Oregon Bulb Farm registered Harlequin was construed be some people at the time as a 'race to recognition' by the larger and more powerful. But it reality, Dr. Patterson was considerably involved with the Harlequin work at Oregon Bulb. After all, it was only natural that Oregon Bulb would take up the project because they had vast resources in land, people and monies to carry out the project. And, they had a man who's philosophy was 'carpet bomb' fields full of seedlings when you've got the room.
When I looked through a lot of these old publications, it's obvious many records are incomplete. And there are discrepancies and contradictions from one author to another. But that's what makes it all so interesting to me (the stuff that's not in the books).
