HYB: delayed germination & heredity

There do exist good, strong anecdotal data linking flower color/pattern
information to ease or difficulty of germination.

Keith Keppel, who certainly has raised enough plicatas to speak with
considerable authority about them, reports that plicatas germinate
considerably more quickly and readily than other colors or patterns.

My own experience with pinks is considerably more limited than Keith's with
plicatas, but I can say that in pink crosses I have planted, germination
percentages (remembered eyeball estimates, not extant count records) were
consistently higher by substantial percentages than the average of other
types.

From Geddes Douglas' and L. F. Randolph's work with classic amoenas (Wabash
type), based on comments published long ago in BAIS (*Bulletin of the American
Iris Society), classic amoenas have notoriously low germination rates, so low
that in order to do any kind of study of them Randolph resorted to embryo
culture in order to get sufficient progeny to study.  BRIGHT HOUR is one of
those that resulted from Douglas seed, Randolph embryo culture if I remember
rightly.  I believe there may be a discussion of this in TWOI.

These three anecdotal data strongly indicate a relation between certain color
patterns and types and radically different germination rates.  At first glance
these appear possibly to be nuclear genetic issues, although the likelyhood
there are differences among the types in endosperm or extra-nuclear structures
in the seed's cells differentially influencing germination is probable.

Linda Mann's experience reported below in this thread are of interest.  The
ancestries of IMMORTALITY and CELEBRATION SONG are rather different, the
former from blues/whites, the latter from tangerine-bearded ancestries for the
most part.  Inbreeding among the seedlings and further crosses from them will
be interesting to follow.  In the initial cross, Immortality was the pod
parent.

Neil Mogensen  z 7  western NC mountains

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