RE: HYB: 101 most difficult faults to overcome

I would love to see what Keith Keppel, Barry Blyth or the Schreiners respond
to this one.  They raise seedlings (as do a few others) by the tens of
thousands.

From my own experience I have found stubbornly persistent:

1) high branching and/or branching that toes in, sometimes even with the bud
crossing the main stalk--these two often appear in the same plant, suggesting
a chromosomal linkage

2) narrow falls ("strappy" was the word used at one time)--narrow parents
rarely give wide offspring

3) issues of being out of proportion--big flowers on a BB height, small
flowers on quite tall stalks, or stds and falls out of proportion to one
another.  These traits can be overcome, but the process produces a lot of
discards

4) weak stalks--falling over at the base, or soft growth so the stalk sags or
goes into strong "S" curves, even to lying on the ground.  Gordon Plough isn't
around to defend himself, but Gordon replanted annually and didn't know that
some of his red-bearded things tended to do this *after* the first year when
left to grow as a second or third year clump.  (Hybridizers take note!  Let at
least a little of your stock become second or third year clumps.)  FLAME KISS
was an early almost-yellow-amoena with a tangerine beard.  The first year
stalks were lovely.  Second year they often snaked to the ground--at least for
me.  The two sibs (one was CHINA GATE) were better about this, I believe.
Since Palomino was the pollen parent, these are half-sibs (or closer) to Melba
Hamblen's VALIMAR and sibs, and closely related to GLITTERING AMBER.  I'm not
aware of the fault showing up in Hamblen lines

5) the Tiffany pinch (or a similar phrase, from K. Keppel) where many things
heavy to Sass bloodlines had one fall that tended not to lay like the others
but looked like a three-legged dancer doing the Can-can.  A lot of early
plicatas and pinks tended to do this.  Fortunately the trait has mostly been
bred out of modern lines.

Those were some of the ones that plagued me in my crosses years ago.

Neil Mogensen  z 7 near Asheville in the mountains of western NC

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