Re: Ensicolor
From: Bill Shear <BILLS@hsc.edu>
I've been growing some biversatas from seed (SIGNA) recently. I think the
seed is donated by Tony Huber. While attractive, most of them are not
distinguishable from pure versicolor, for just the reasons Tony
suggests--the backcrossing to versicolor results in a loss of ensata
chromosomes. He has overcome this by careful selection of plants that show
ensata phenotypes.
Seedlings now in the garden to bloom next spring do look different from
versicolor, with taller foliage carrying a midrib. I hope they will show
more ensata. Also have some supposed tetraploids coming along. It would
be interesting to cross these versatas and biversatas with other versicolor
derivatives, like xrobusta and versilaevs. There are also sibcolors
(siberica x versicolor;I bloomed one this spring and it was definitely
intermediate between the two parents, but set no seed) and some reported
hybrids involving setosa. A mix of all these species might eventually lead
to a beardless strain analogous to the TBs of today--highly variable
mixtures of several species. The future looks exciting!
Some "versicolors" from last year's SIGNA seed look very much like
virginica, with very tall, purple-based foliage. We'll see what happens.
Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills@hsc.edu>
What was the best thing BEFORE sliced bread?
-IAQ (Infrequently Asked Questions)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, or to change your subscription
to digest, go to the ONElist web site, at http://www.onelist.com and
select the User Center link from the menu bar on the left.
