What you are seeing today in lavish edges started well over 20 years ago, and the problem with blossoms hanging up is also something that has been seen before as the size of edges increased. If you look at some of the edged flowers of the early 1990's such as H. David Kirchhoff (Salter, 1992), the edges were relatively modest compared to what we are seeing today. However, as edges increased in size, blossoms that hung up became a real problem, and hybridizers addressed that issue by selecting and interbreeding flowers that had less of an edge at the tips of the petals since this was the place the majority of hang-up problems occurred. You can see the change in the edge tips of many of the introductions in the early 2000's such as H. Green Mystique (Stamile, 2002). Just a couple of years later, big edged flowers were being introduced that usually opened well including H. Boundless Beauty (Salter, 2005) and H. The Terminator (Stamile, 2006). You can also see this on the picture of H. The Incredible Earl Watts (Salter, 2012) in the post above. This hybridizing advance has lasted well, but with edges now well over 1/2 inch and sometimes 1 inch in width, and particularly with flowers having a wide, bubbly edge on the wide petals of round-form flowers, there is simply more petal material than ever before and some of those petals don't unfurl as easily as those with smaller edges or more narrow petals. I assume several hybridizers are working on this issue just as others did in the 1990's and it will be interesting to see what they come up with to again solve the hang-up problems and again allow for even larger edges. It looks to me like the flower you show (H. The Fourth Angel, Petit, 2009) uses a different technique, that of having petals that are more narrow as is seen in H. Golden Tentacles (Lambertson, 2004).
Larry
