Re: HYB:Returning Chameleon & Immortality

I completely agree with Betty on this one. Especially now that I've had a bit more experience with using IMMORTALITY.
I had the good luck to get a huge crop of fairly nice seedlings from my first cross using IMMORTALITY (X CELEBRATION SONG) - it turned out so well, I made the cross again a year later, and eventually had a total of nearly 50 surviving seedlings from 2 pods. An extraordinary survival rate for a cross here.
Last year was the first to bloom many second generation seedlings (IMM grandkids), some of them pretty nice.
I assumed that IMM crosses would always be that nice <g>, but have yet to find another pollen donor to produce such spectacular results. The 13 subsequent IMM crosses have each produced < 12 surviving seedlings so far. Most of those haven't bloomed yet, but quality ranges from dreadful to fairly good, partly depending on the mate.
If all of the ~30 different crosses on IMM from 2006 season are similarly unproductive, I may give up searching for another like CSONG.
Except for a couple of tries this year using a few Schreiner intros. IMM seems to be more eager to mate with Sch pollen than with others I've tried so far.
I like that the other parent of RETURNING CHAMELEON is pink because that means it will be easier to get something other than blue or white in subsequent generations.
Loic, there is no way that my memory of five or six seedlings some 12+ years ago proves that it's NOT a good parent for pink. Seedling #6 might have had extremely modern form. Or maybe a different choice for parent would have made the difference? Some people don't get good children from Pink Attraction. Even 50 seedlings wouldn't prove a negative. Strange things happen!
Betty, maybe not try the cross with PARADISE again, but maybe with something more modern. With all those white genes, I wouldn't expect the first generation to be a bright yellow, but the fact that it produced yellow seedlings means you got rid of the block for yellow (the same block for pink) that's present in IMMORTALITY, but did <not> get rid of the block for blue. So a cross between your yellow seedlings and a pink rebloomer would have had the potential for pink, or at least stronger yellow color.
One 1990 cross was Immortality X Paradise. I planted 122 seed and the cross produced two sets of twins. The notes say "all bloomed yellow!" This is a cross I remember very well and saw great potential. Even lined out a couple with plans to breed with it and introduce it. These were taller than most Immortality seedlings and most were well branched. Palest yellow selfs and bitones. Not a bright iris in the bunch. No rebloom. Paradise grows here, but I doubt I'll remake the cross. Immortality doesn't want to set seed here!
My highest success rate with IMM as pod has been using later blooming stalks, ripening pollen indoors, putting pollen on the stigma as soon as the falls can be opened, making sure it's out there all day for that bloom. Sometimes putting more pollen the same bloom more than once per day, sometimes even the next day.
I think the later blooming stalks is the biggest key to success here - early ones look good, but I suspect are carrying effects of late freeze damage. 

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Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
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