Lots of things blooming here and I have been crossing 'Borscht' onto two 9" rosettes from a 'Micah' X 'Killer' cross. The latter two are sort of purple-ish but you can tell they have a green parent lurking too as they are not a nice rich purple. They do have SIZE though and the leaves are wide, which came from the 'Micah' side as 'Killer' has much more narrow leaves. Anyway, my dreams of foot wide semps in bright reds and purples are getting closer! I think these might be useful edging plants for perennial borders as they would have the size and colors to be showy enough to compete with the flowers of other perennials.
In the seedling beds there are several interesting things showing in the row from 'St. Cloud' X self. I noticed that 'St. Cloud' has very pale pink flowers compared to most cobweb types and thought it must be from a cross of a yellow-flowered semp and arachnoideum. There were only 6 seedlings in the cross but things are definitely segregating in interesting directions. Some incredibly wide-leaved things and some already quite large. Two even have increase already. One is clearly not a cobweb but I can't tell what species it most resembles yet. Anyway, INTERESTING. Getting novel forms and colors in the cobwebs seems to be the most difficult as arachnoideum crosses so readily with other semps we've had lots of the combinations already hybridized and the F1 is often not too fertile so you don't get interesting recombinants.
Hope you are all having fun crossing!
Kevin
