From Andrew Wheeler
Hi Chuck, I've seen the Yahoo thread, I was putting my thoughts together to reply. I've attached some photos of an Appaloosa blue x neat trick cross, I brought a flower to work a bunch of years ago and put it under the dissecting microscope. I used neat trick for several crosses and it's a frustration because it's usually pod sterile.
If you can get your hands on Appaloosa blue by all means I would try to work with that as well. Bob and John's assessment that the loss of color is a flaw is pretty accurate because neat trick flowers will struggle to open under less than ideal conditions such as acid rain or excessive heat because the tissue loss in the petals makes them fairly weak.
John White grew neat trick in a big row, it was fairly thick and maybe 20 feet long and it typically produced no seed pods either through deliberate crosses or bee pods, at all. He recalled that there was one year when the row produced a bunch of bee pods and he wasn't sure why, but it was a fluke.
Go ahead and post this reply to the Yahoo group if you like I'll try to reply again later with more information when I get a minute,
-Andrew
