Re: Re: HYB: Beard color

John, I find your reference to the Hamblen bloodlines interesting.  Both
ENCHANTED APRIL and AMBROISIE are strong to Hamblen ancestry, and I have
seedlings from both of them X LOTUS LAND and a cross of ENCHANTED APRIL X
VIENNA WALTZ to bloom this spring.  The Enchanted April seedlings have a very
wide range of vigor within the cross, something I find a bit surprising.
There are some other crosses along this line I sent to Tennessee to my
daughter's place to be grown.  I have no idea how they are fareing.  I know
she had a lot of losses last summer, as did I, from rain and weather issues.

I made the crosses with the intent to incorporate Hamblen bloodlines into what
I was doing, then I've also made some blue x pink crosses in parallel with
what she did with the Valimar group.  I found her things tough and reliable in
Idaho, but I understand that as the years went on her varieties became locked
into the high desert conditions and did not fare so well in other areas.  That
underscores our need to keep making outcrosses into lines from other areas to
guarantee performance across geographic differences.

Keppel's things have also incorporated a lot of blue x pink outcrosses
bringing a lot of quality and diversity into his lines, showing strongly in
the FOGBOUND offspring CRYSTAL GAZER, VENETIAN GLASS and PARIS FASHION.  My
intentions have been different from his, as it is not the dark top qualities
I'm after, but growability, width, vigor and branching.

Tell Muhlestein sent me once the blue sib to Valimar that appears in a number
of pedigrees, but I never used it.  Somehow it simply did not please my
intuitive side.  I had other things under way I liked better.  Time and
circumstances interruped all that and my hybridizing took a twenty-plus year
vacation.

I had not thought of the Hamblen colors in terms of oil-painting qualities,
but I like that description.  The beard color in Ambroisie has been
intriguing, and the finish and surface texture of Enchanted April as well.
The manner in which the bloomstalk emerges in Ambroisie is odd.  It seems to
grow by sections, each stage of the stalk development waiting for the
completion of the previous before extending.  It reminds me of the
construction of a high rise building.  I've never seen another iris do that.

Neil Mogensen   z  7   western NC

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